Promoted from a comment about income inequality in Connecticut by Ross to Childhood hunger rising in Connecticut, a prosperous state (and linking to the video.)
Actually CT has some of the highest income inequality in the country. There are a lot of the country’s most “prosperous” people there, but cities like New Haven and Hartford are extremely poor, and there are a good deal of other former industrial cities that, while not quite as big and poor as New Haven and Hartford aren’t too far off, like Middletown and Bridgeport.
I responded:
I grew up in West Hartford, which is prosperous. Hartford has been circling the drain for decades. Part of the problem is that CT does not have county governmental entities. It’s just towns, then the state. So, if an insurance company moves from Hartford to Bloomfield all the tax revenue goes there and doesn’t get spread around. Plus, most of the wealthy ‘burbs could care less if Hartford survives. The class snobbery can be vicious.
Also, parts of eastern Connecticut near Rhode Island resemble poor areas in Appalachia. Insurance companies in the Hartford area and hedge fund / financial companies around Greenwich are mostly what contribute to Connecticut having a high per capita income. However there are many, many poor people too with a few very wealthy skewing the data upwards.
