Religious Adherents: Bad Stripe Not Visible, But Is This Data Meaningful?

Found this map at Perell.com. Whenever I see cultural maps of the U.S. like this one, I look for the Bad Stripe, a coherent area that pops out as below-average in maps of human development indices. It stretches roughly from far western PA through West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee across Arkansas and into Oklahoma (see more here.) My expectation would be higher religious belief across the Bad Stripe; or, at least, some pattern that makes the Bad Stripe stick out from surrounding areas. Not present at all; and typically, lower human development = more religious. Bad Stripe or not, there are some big surprises on this map, and it doesn't really align with both what most Americans would expect, as well as my own experience traveling and living in the country. West Virginia is much less religious than Western Pennsylvania? Really? Central California has a religious stripe across the middle? I've lived near both these places and find this hard to believe. The Frontier Strip is evident but the Rockies, especially to the north, are mostly less religious than other rural areas - also very suspicious is the similar level of religiousness between rural and coastal areas of Pacific states. If California is going to have religious and unreligious zones, they're more likely to run north and south parallel to the (liberal, likely less religious) coast.

One problem across all such surveys is that how one defines "religious" (or in this case "religious adherents") matters a great deal. Was it something like asking "How important is religion to you?" Or "Do you belong to a church?" Looking at this map, I strongly suspect it was the second, and that many people in some area (eg West Virginia) that do not belong or regularly attend services would say that religion is quite important to them. A place that happens to have a single large church would look very religious, whereas a place where people were very religious but did not have many churches would look very un-religious.

Happiness by State in the US, 2018

A study done by Wallethub (their image below) using their own 31-factor happiness index shows the Bad Stripe, along with a few other interesting patterns.


1) The Bad Stripe (West Virgina, Kentucky and Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma) is evident as a negative outlier as usual. These make up 6 of the bottom 11. For fans of Albion's Seed, this is where the Reavers are, i.e. Greater Appalachia. This also shows the limitation of a state-level analysis. There is significant structure within the states. Pennsylvania's southwest if taken separately would very likely look like West Virginia. The southeast if taken separately would be much more like New York and New Jersey. Same thing for Missouri - the northern part of the state is likely more like the Upper Midwest, and the southern part is the Ozarks, part of the Bad Stripe and more like Arkansas.

2) The Upper Midwest and Utah stand out as positive outliers, as usual. Moynihan's Law - is it the result of Yankee settlers (again Albion's Seed), non-British Isles North European immigrants, or some combination? (Map below from Wiki on German Ancestry in the USA and Canada.)



3) Very interesting that two demographically similar states like the Carolinas could be so different in this rating. North Carolina has done better economically than South Carolina, and culturally does tend to move in sync with Virgina (perhaps most famously in the 2008 presidential election predicted by Nate Silver) - which makes sense because South Carolina was largely settled from Georgia initially, and North Carolina from Virginia. Still, they're not THAT different, and they have a very different happiness outcome.

4) I can't argue for similar historical links to the Reavers for Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, who as always fare very poorly. You'll have to develop your own theory for that!

Dry Counties - Roughly Track the Bad Stripe

Above, map of dry counties in the US (Wiki.) Compare to one of many Bad Stripe maps, a map of Well-Being, below. This stripe pops out on various maps as a coherent region of the US ("Greater Appalachia") with various unique cultural characteristics and poor human development characteristics, here.

Per Capita Income and the Bad Stripe

The Bad Stripe runs southwest from extreme SW Pennsylvania through West Virgina, turning westward through Kentucky and part of Tennessee, crossing the Mississippi through the Ozarks and into eastern Oklahoma. As seen in previous posts about it, it sticks out as a more-or-less contiguous zone of low happiness and quality of life indicators which is a border zone between North/Midwest and South, and is thought of by many as Greater Appalachian (or the greater reach of the Border Reavers, if Albion's Seed is your bag.) Long ago I thought this was just an area of contiguous mountains and hills, hence low population density and slower development, but you can't say that about western Kentucky and Tennessee or eastern Oklahoma.

The county-level per capita income map shows a poorer area roughly paralleling the Bad stripe, along with some of the Black Belt to the south and east of the Southern fall line cities.

Bad Stripe Is Evident in More QOL Indicators

New as of 2023: southern half of the Appalachian part of the Bad Stripe doing better than than northern half (divider is basically along the TN/KY, VA/NC borders.)

The Bad Stripe is a section of the US that runs from extreme southwest Pennsylania along the Appalachians, turns west and decreases in intensity through western Kentucky and Tennessee, and extends through Arkansas and into eastern Oklahoma. As noted before, it consistently shows lower values for happiness and human development indices. For US demographics and geography buffs: it's not the Black Belt, which abuts it further southeast and closer to the coast. It is clearly, however, a cultural boundary zone between north and south - basically, from the southern shore of the Ohio River to the Deep South - and the part that extends west of the Mississippi may be a result of having been settled by Appalachians, since Americans have tended to in-migrate east-to-west. But the reasons for the Strip and whether it really has resulted from the same factors remains unclear.

Below are two maps from the several earlier articles showing the frequently re-emerging Bad Stripe: increased voting GOP for president in 2008 (bright red is 15% or more increase since 2004), and self-reported by congressional district, also 2008.





So it was with great interest that I read this Medium article ("The Origin of Populist Surges Everywhere", there's another more-intense-Republican-voting map, as well as these two: death by overdose (mostly opioids, i.e. pain meds) on top, and firearm suicides on the bottom - "diseases of despair", as the author calls them.

The Bad Stripe = "Greater Appalachia"

The Bad Stripe I've identified based on voting out of sync with the rest of the country and even the rest of their states, and a consistent cluster of low human development indicators - and it appears on Jayman's blog, more or less, as his Greater Appalachia. Is it because it's a boundary zone? Settled by Border Reivers?



Above: the yall zone, the border of which is basically the Bad Stripe. Note the correspondence with northern Greater Appalachia.

The Bad Stripe as Boundary Zone

The Bad Stripe is an area of the U.S. running roughly east-to-west from West Virginia, through Kentucky and Tennesee to Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. It is Bad because human development indicators, economics, and general indicators of flourishing and happiness are depressed there relative to the rest of the U.S. (Note: it is not just the Black Belt - it is considerably inland and upland of that.) This pattern frequently jumps out of maps of the U.S. showing demographic or economic data, and one thing that has become clear is that the Bad Stripe is a boundary zone between trade regions, religions, and now dialects (previous language boundary shown here). And here we see it again: witness the border of y'all, which runs right through the Bad Stripe.


By Joshua Katz at UNC, via Business Insider.

Obesity and the Bad Stripe

Maps here. Obesity splits into two bands in the eastern U.S.; one is the Bad Stripe and one is the Black Belt. I originally noticed the Bad Stripe when it shifted more Republican for president in the 2008 election (the opposite of the rest of the country) and then when the same shape continued to appear in maps of other indicators. My initial surprise about the Bad Stripe is that it was not the Black Belt, which can be clearly seen on the obesity map.

The Dialect of the Bad Stripe

The Bad Stripe as I've marked it out before (most recent here) is in many ways a boundary or transition zone between North and South, for example in social networks and religion. It turns out that it's a separate dialect zone too. The map can't be embedded well so click through to this dialect map of North American English, and you'll see that the Bad Stripe largely overlaps with the non-Texas part of the Inland South zone.

In many other systems (ecology and social networks) being at a phase transition is good, i.e. tidepools, savannas near jungles, being the only person who speaks both languages of two adjacent and relatively wealthy populations, etc. If the repeatedly observed "boundariness" of the Bad Stripe is not a coincidence or a historical accident, it could be that either the principle is reverse here, or that some aspects of the Bad Stripe are caused by the other negative conditions that previously obtained.

The Bad Stripe and Sexual Curiosity

That's a heat map from okcupid showing the density of self-identified straight people who have had, or would like to have, a same-sex experience. Note the appearance of the Bad Stripe again: markedly less adventurous. Richard Florida has frequently shown positive correlations between economic growth, innovation as measured by number of patents, education and property values between gay-tolerant attitudes in cities and states, the assumption being that this reflects the post-scarcity values that promote innovation in a modern economy. (You can see the Bad Stripe jumping out at you again in this map, and others before it.) No surprise to most that West Virginia, Mississippi and Oklahoma are not the places to start your software company or make discoveries about yourself.

The Bad Stripe Continues: Human Development Index

The largest contiguous area (8 states) of lowest-category development index is found in the Bad Stripe, and this tracks many other health, education and economic indicators (play with the map and data yourself.) One very ineresting mismatch: violent crime per capita absolutely does not track the Bad Stripe. Neither does property crime.

Gini coefficient is highest in the southern U.S. and California. Guess: different causes for the South and California. In California it's ongoing immigration from a developing country, and in the South it's a holdover from agriculture. It would be interesting to see this same map, but only for people born in the U.S. California would probably blend into the rest of the country, and the South would remain. Thesis topic if it hasn't already been done: relationship between caste-system agrarianism and high Gini, two centuries later, in multiple countries (India, slavery areas in the U.S., Russia's serf system, etc.) Countries could serve as their own controls by comparing parts of the country with similar agrarian output but different caste traditions.

Other interesting trend: western states have more women legislators in their state legislatures than eastern states. This seems to be true regardless of whether the states are left- or right-leaning. Why? That these states were founded later when women's suffrage was a reality or close to it, and that value was fixed in political habits through the generations? In any event it seems less strange in light of this to contemplate that Wyoming was the first state which gave the franchise to women.

The Bad Stripe Continues: Overall Well-Being

In an overall well-being survey, the Bad Stripe that jumps off of maps of the U.S. of well-being, health indicators, and economics is again unfortunately represented.

Read more about the Bad Stripe here, here and here. Looking at the reverse of the map above, the photonegative of the Bad Stripe stands out in this map of frequent mental distress (Kentucky comes up worst.) In addition to the relations there, the Bad Stripe is also the boundary between three geographical social networks built by Facebook users, and it also tracks the boundary between Baptists and Methodists judging by geography-associated tags on the internet. It's tempting to speculate about the link between being a cultural boundary zone and an emotionally depressed area and what the causality might be.