Double-whammy: Hundreds of counties hit with high poverty, high inequality

A new demographics report that tracks the combined increases in poverty and income inequality across the nation has nothing but bad news for Michigan. 
In the maps above (I apologize for the poor quality) counties with high inequality and high poverty are depicted in red; counties with high inequality and low poverty are blue; those with low inequality and high poverty are orange; and those with inequality and low poverty are green.
As the maps make clear, Michigan in 1989 was nearly all green but in the most current map with data from 2008-12 the state is looking fairly freckle-faced, with flecks of red, blue and orange.

As first reported in the Wall Street Journal, the study by demographers Mark Mather and Beth Jarosz of the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit demographic research group, found that this double-whammy of poverty and inequality is especially a Southern problem, it’s also a national one.
The authors of the study concluded this:

“In the 1980s and 1990s, income inequality and poverty intersected primarily in Appalachia, the Deep South, and parts of California and the Southwest….But during the past decade, poverty and inequality spread to new areas in Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, Michigan and Tennessee."

Overall, the share of high-poverty, high-inequality counties in the U.S. is growing. Counties in this category reached 37 percent in 2008-12, up from 29 percent in 1989. Conversely, the share of low-poverty, low-inequality counties dropped to 34 percent compared to 50 percent in '89.