Hillbilly Elegy

today serves as a meeting spot for
druggies and dealers. Main Street is now
the place you avoid after dark.
This change is a symptom of a new
economic reality: rising residential
segregation. The number of working-
class whites in high-poverty
neighborhoods is growing. In 1970, 25
percent of white children lived in a
neighborhood with poverty rates above
10 percent. In 2000, that number was 40
percent. It’s almost certainly even higher
today. As a 2011 Brookings Institution
study found, “compared to 2000,
residents of extreme-poverty
neighborhoods in 2005–09 were more
likely to be white, native-born, high