Life in the rustbelt

Book review: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in CrisisTalk about poverty in the US and you’ll think of inner-city Detroit or Baltimore, says Matthew Partridge. But over the past decade, the areas that have done the worst are in the “rustbelt”.

Dr Matthew Partridge
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published
in Features

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Published by Harper Collins, £14.99

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Talk about poverty in the US and you'll think of inner-city Detroit or Baltimore. But over the past decade, the areas that have done the worst are in the "rustbelt": former industrial towns in states such as Ohio and West Virginia, where jobs are scarce and life expectancy has been declining.

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In Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance tries to explain these areas' decline, by recounting his journey from a single-parent family to Yale, via the MarineCorps. The result is awell-written bookpowerfully underlining the way that changes in family structure have worsened the problems caused by increasing inequality and industrial decline.

It's also highly topical, since it was Hillary Clinton's failure to win over voters in these areas that helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency. The author's evident distaste for government intervention provides hints as to why many voters in the Midwest reject Democrat-backed policies that should logically benefit them, although it does little to explain what was so different about Trump that persuaded voters to back him.

Dr Matthew Partridge
Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri

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