Writer challenges data-based approach of article naming her county America's hardest place to live

Anne Shelby

Writer Anne Shelby, a longtime resident of Clay County, Kentucky, has responded to Annie Lowery's New York Times article “What’s The Matter With Eastern Kentucky?” in which six Eastern Kentucky counties were among the 10 judged hardest in America to live, with Clay at the top. In an article that was rejected by the Times but appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Shelby challenges the story's reliance on data.

"Lowery reports on a study that compiled data by county in six categories: education, median income, life expectancy, unemployment, disability and obesity," and the hard facts they illustrate are not to be ignored, Shelby writes. "But does the average of these six data points really mean these are, 'the hardest places to live in the United States?' The Times piece uses statistics both to define the problem and to solve it."

Shelby notes the story suggests that "The thing for us to do—and the government should help us do this . . . is to relocate to places with better numbers. We could, for example, head out to Los Alamos County, N.M., and get jobs in the nuclear-weapons industry. Since Los Alamos County boasts the best statistics, it should, by the article's logic, be the easiest place in the country to live. Moving into a suburb of the nation's capital might be nice. Six of those counties made it into the top 10."

Shelby suggests people might want to take a cue from a play she co-wrote, in which one character says: "Maybe we need to come up with a different quality-of-life index for little country places. How many points could we get for each hill? How much is a river worth? Can we add a category for walking on ground your ancestors walked? Or for the percentage of neighbors who'd show up in five minutes if you needed them? How can you measure that? And how can you measure how much you'd miss a place if you had to leave?" (Read more)

Eastern Kentucky author Silas House previously responded to the Times article.