Everyone knows the map.
For almost every social or economic issue — poverty, anti-LGBTQ+ laws, educational access — America’s geography tells a familiar story.
The map of college education shown below mirrors patterns we’ve seen again and again: the Deep South and Mountain West trailing near the bottom, East and West coasts perched near the top.
That familiar spatial narrative isn’t just anecdotal; it’s deeply rooted in interlocking systems.
Poverty, political alignments, policy decisions—they spiral together, so much that it’s often impossible to say if poverty causes, or is caused by, political dominance or religious participation. Does voting Republican lead to poverty, or does entrenched economic hardship sway voting patterns? It’s a feedback loop, woven tight.
Except when it isn’t.
What could California, Montana, Mississippi, New York and Maine possibly have in common that would break that trend?
What could Louisiana be doing better than Washington?
Or West Virginia doing better than…
