You are probably doing well in Eastern North Carolina if:

a) You live close enough to a military base to get a tattoo or a lap dance.

b) You live close enough to the beach to smell the salt marshes.

c) You live close enough to a medical school that half the lunchtime crowd at Bojangles' is wearing white lab coats; or

d) You live close enough to the Triangle that you cuss traffic on Interstate 40.

Otherwise, things are not looking up for Eastern North Carolina.

That the east remains North Carolina's problem child is underscored by a new report on the Coastal Plain by the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research.

The report notes that 16 eastern counties lost population between 2000 and 2004: Bertie, Columbus, Craven, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Halifax, Hyde, Jones, Lenoir, Martin, Northampton, Onslow, Robeson, Vance, Washington and Wayne. Those who leave are often the best and brightest of the region's sons and daughters.

If Eastern North Carolina were a separate state, it would be drawing comparisons to Mississippi and Arkansas. Mississippi has a median household income of $31,330; areas in the east without military bases have a median of $31,903.

Things are so bad that the idea of taking New York's garbage in large regional landfills was not laughed off. Neither is a Branson, Mo.-style hub for country music in Roanoke Rapids, or a giant new port facility near Southport.

Falling tobacco barns might make a pretty Bob Timberlake painting. But you can't say the same thing for shuttered textile mills or vacant storefronts.

It is no coincidence that most of the state's political leaders come from Eastern North Carolina. Gov. Mike Easley of Rocky Mount succeeded Jim Hunt of Wilson. The leading candidates for governor in 2008 include Beverly Perdue of New Bern, Richard Moore of Oxford (near east), Roy Cooper of Rocky Mount and Fred Smith of Clayton.

Our most influential political leader is state Senate leader Marc Basnight of Manteo.

Basnight gets criticized for loading up a truck with political pork and sending it east on U.S. 64. Easley is second-guessed for diverting national tobacco settlement money to eastern projects.

But politics is a serious business in the east. Public employment accounts for 23.7 percent of the jobs there, compared with 17.7 percent statewide.

Three of four workers in the east work in the service or retail sector, mostly in low-paying jobs. In eight counties, Wal-Mart is the largest private employer. In four counties, meat-packing plants reign supreme. The region has lost half its farms in the past 30 years.

Recruiting new industry is difficult. As the center notes, economic development goes "one step forward, two steps back."

While Nash County gets a $16 million Cheesecake Factory bakery, nearby Glenoit Fabrics Corp. lays off workers and Glenoit Universal Ltd. closes its rug factory.

The east has so many needs it's hard to know where to begin -- but better schools, roads and utilities are a start.

The east is North Carolina's playground and historical fount. But it needs to be more than just drive-through country on the way to your beach condo.