Most Americans live in counties that are at least partially protected by earthen and concrete levees, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency statistics obtained by the New Orleans advocacy group Levees.org.

While those levees don't necessarily protect all the people living in the 881 counties that have them, a study for Levees.org by geographer Ezra Boyd concludes that the levees more than pay for themselves when their cost is compared to the investment they protect.

In Louisiana, 37 of 64 parishes contain levees, and those parishes contain 74 percent of the state's population, and 75 percent of its annual total income. On a per-capita basis, residents of those parishes earned about $1,000 more a year in 2000 than their counterparts in parishes without levees.

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