Maps detail the rapid growth of poverty and income inequality, county by county

Poverty and income inequality, long-running staples of the South, have spread to other parts of the country at a rapid rate since 1989, Josh Zumbrun reports for The Wall Street Journal.

Poverty and income inequality have been especially bad in Appalachia, the Deep South and parts of the Southwest and California, Zumbrun writes. But "during the past decade, poverty and inequality spread to new areas in Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, Michigan and Tennessee," says Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit demographic research group. (Population Reference Bureau maps; click on image to view a larger version)