"Wide gaps in well-being across the U.S." from APM's Marketplace

BROOKE: You can see over here on the left that even in this sort of Class C strip mall everything's open. There isn't an empty storefront there that I can see. No, I can't see a single one. This contrast is documented by a group called the American Human Development Project. It's been looking at income, longevity, and education in congressional districts across the U.S. as part of its new assessment of well-being called "The Measure of America." The group calculates that in terms of well-being people in the Ninth District of southwest Virginia are 20 years behind the national average. The richer, healthier, more educated Northerners are where the country will be decades from now. Crossing Virginia is like taking a time machine from the past to the future. Sarah Burd-Sharps is the report's co-author. SARAH BURD-SHARPS: We're trying to get people to recognize that having groups falling badly behind in this country is not good for those groups themselves, but it's also really bad for our competitiveness and for our future. In Virginia, a child born today in the poor district is likely to die eight years before a child born in the richer district. In the north, typical household income is more than double, $51,000 compared to $21,000 a year.

View the APM Marketplace full feature story, here. Download the podcast here. See also: The Measure of America, 2010-2011: Mapping Risks and Resilience