The Opportunity Map

A revelatory account of inequality in America offering a bold new solution grounded in local success

It’s a refrain that we hear all the time: if only the United States could be more like the Nordics on welfare, the Japanese on high-speed rail, or the British on health care. But what if the most effective solutions to our seemingly intractable problems could be found in our own backyards?

In The Opportunity Map, Jeremy Ney travels around the country to visit the communities facing the deepest disadvantages in housing, health care, employment, incomes, and education. Along the way, he uncovers something remarkable: For many of the most distressed places in America, there exists a counterpart—a community that is demographically and culturally identical yet has cracked the code on the American Dream. From the coal mines of West Virginia to the farmlands of California, from the vast plains of South Dakota to the roaring metropolises of New York, Ney reveals that “mirror counties” offer a blueprint for prosperity that can reasonably be transplanted from one community to the next.

The Opportunity Map offers a promising new approach to reversing inequality by tapping into the ingenuity of overlooked communities that have managed to beat the odds.