Most of nation's persistently poor are in rural South

Eighty-five percent of the nation's most consistently poor counties are in rural areas, and most of those counties are in the South, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, which defines persistent-poverty counties "as being persistently poor if 20 percent or more of their populations were living in poverty over the last 30 years." Data was used from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses and the 2007-11 American Community Survey, the Census Bureau's constant polling operation. 

Of the 353 persistently poor counties, 301 are rural, and 252 are in the South, where 26 percent of the population is persistently poor. "There are no non-metro persistent-poverty counties in the Northeast, 29 non-metro persistent-poverty counties in the Midwest, and 20 in the West," ERS says. (Read more) For the state-by-state and county-by-county data of the percentage of total population living in poverty in 2011, click here.