People who live in areas that did poorly during the Great Recession and didn't make a financial comeback could be "trapped" in a "Catch-22" situation, according to the Economic Innovation Group. The Huffington Post reports on EIG research late in 2018 that examined approximately 25,800 zip codes to see how residents fared in the wake of the Great Recession. EIG compared the periods 2007–2011 and 2012–2016 to see which communities had been left behind when the country started to pull out of the big fiscal hole it was in. It found that many rural communities, largely in the South, remain behind the 8-ball and have never actually recovered—and that many of the people in them, seeking a way out through higher education, are actually now mired in student debt and are trapped where they are. Still, poor counties aren't confined to the South, the Midwest or the West; there are plenty in the Northeast as well. The report quotes Kenan Fikri, research director at EIG, saying, "Young people are kind of trapped in debt in distressed communities. And they don't really have a pathway to get out of their situation and be able to afford moving to a prosperous metropolitan area to try to turn the situation around." EIG defines distress as being based on seven metrics: educational attainment, housing vacancy, unemployment levels, poverty rate, median income, the change in number of jobs and the change in business establishments. According to EIG, parts of rural America are "projected to never fully recover" from the Great Recession. GoBankingRates, too, looked at communities to see where the poorest people in the country live. It evaluated each zip code by four factors:

1. Median household income, that is, the point that divides half the people making more and half making less.
2. Mean household income, which is the total of all incomes, divided by the number of people reporting.
3. What portion of households are making more than $150,000 annually
4. What portion are making less than $25,000 a year

The slides above show the 10 poorest zip codes in America, based on GoBankingRates' evaluation, along with the percentages of those who earn annual incomes both high and low. READ MORE: Growing gap in lifespan between rich and poor in United States 5 richest, 5 poorest area codes in the U.S. 10 states with the worst financial stress