Morning Must-Read: Annie Lowrey: What’s the Matter With Eastern Kentucky?

Annie Lowrey: What’s the Matter With Eastern Kentucky?: “Clay County… median household income there is barely above the poverty line…

…at $22,296, and is just over half the nationwide median…. The disability rate is… 11.7 percent. (Nationwide, that figure is 1.3 percent.) Life expectancy is six years shorter than average…. It’s coal country… in name only… just 54 people [are] employed in coal mining in Clay County, a precipitous drop from its coal-production peak in 1980. That year, about 2.5 million tons of coal were taken out of the ground in Clay; this year… 38,000…. What has happened in the smudge of the country between New Orleans and Pittsburgh–the Deep South and Appalachia–is in many ways as remarkable as what has happened in affluent cities…