More than 50 million Americans live in “economically distressed” communities, according to a new report by the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan research group backed by technology entrepreneurs.
Many of those communities, which are located primarily in the rural South and in old industrial centers in the North, saw no employment gains between 2011 and 2015. At the same time, about 85 million people live in “prosperous” communities which have claimed the lion’s share of job growth and income.
The worry among some policy experts is that large sections of the country are being left behind economically.
