The headline above, from ABC news, references the new 2022 County Health Rankings report published by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. From the story:
"The data reinforces what we’ve known for some time. People in both rural and urban communities face long-standing barriers, systemic barriers -- avoidable barriers -- that get in the way of groups of people and places in our country from being able to live long and well," Sheri Johnson, co-director of County Health Rankings & Roadmaps and director of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, told ABC News.
The acknowledgement of these systemic and avoidable barriers makes describing improved economic futures as “out of reach” an odd and fatalistic choice. The report does describe major inequality, but it does not, as far as ABC News reports, suggest it is mysteriously insurmountable or natural to U.S. life. Instead it clearly describes it as essentially man-made. The headline below, from United Press International, makes plain what the solution to this man-made problem of low, unequal wages is: pay increases! (From, one could infer, those creating the inequality.)
