The South is home to the five poorest counties in the country, by five-year median household income, according to five years of census data analyzed by 24/7 Wall St.
- McCreary County, Ky.: $20,972
- Sumter County, Ala.: $22,186
- McDowell County, W. Va.: $22,252
- Holmes County, Miss.: $22,325
- Starr County, Texas: $24,927
Data for the analysis comes from estimated median annual household incomes from 2009 through 2013 from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, as well as additional data on education and employment from the Census Buruea and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Georgia's Telfair County is ranked the No. 10 by this analysis, with a median household income of $26,634.
As 24/7 Wall St.'s Thomas C. Frohlich notes, there are some commonalities in the nation's poorest places. "The population of 24 of these poorest counties was predominantly rural. Eight had 100 [percent] rural populations. ... In the five years through 2013, the percentage of adults who had attained at least a bachelor's degree was below the comparable national figure of 28.8 [percent] in 45 of the 50 counties," he wrote.
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