Data Show Stimulus Isn’t Reaching the Nation’s Neediest Counties and States

by Marian Wang
ProPublica, Yesterday, 10:52 a.m.

Around this time last year, we did an analysis of stimulus data and found that despite pledges from the Obama administration that stimulus money would go to the areas hardest hit by the recession [1], there had been no relationship [1] between where the money ended up and places with high unemployment and poverty rates.

A year later, that's still true [2], according to a report by PBS NewsHour’s Patchwork Nation. Patchwork Nation is a project that crunches demographic data and assigns counties to one of 12 community types, helping better characterize the county’s population in a way that goes beyond the red-blue binary [3]. (Take a look at the map to see where your county [4] falls.)