Over at Nationhood Lab, I wrote about the regional divides in household creditworthiness, debt, and delinquency and the correlations with lack of medical care, using the regional cultures described in American Nations.
At Nationhood Lab, we’ve previously shown how the characteristics of the rival colonization streams that spread across this continent in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th century begat and explain contemporary divides over politics, gun control, abortion, immigration, climate change, and a wide range of health and well-being metrics, from life expectancy to diabetes. But the regional divides described in the American Nations model can also be seen in microeconomics, including consumer habits, behavior and creditworthiness.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.