Blue States Practice the Family Values Red States Preach https://nyti.ms/2hL48aa Toplines: Red states and regions have higher rates of teen pregnancy, poverty, divorce, even child marriage, tied in large part to lower rates of college education and birth control.
Starting in the 1980s, the nation's basket cases were its urban areas -- where a toxic stew of crime, drugs and suburban flight conspired to make large cities the slowest-growing and most troubled places. http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/26/rural-america-is-new-inner-city-2.amp.html Today, however, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows that by many key measures of socioeconomic well-being, those charts have flipped. In terms of poverty, college attainment, teenage births, divorce, death rates from heart disease and cancer, reliance on federal disability insurance and male labor-force participation, rural counties now rank the worst among the four major U.S. population groupings (the others are big cities, suburbs and medium or small metro areas).
Figuring out which of these ideas will work,and then deploying them, requires investment from governments and the private sector alike. Government funding gives scientists the freedom to come up with and test bold new ideas, and then private investors take innovation from the lab to the marketplace with companies that deliver solutions at scale.