Makes total sense; the rural areas have been manipulated by the shareholder class into selling out most of their quality-of-life-enabling institutions for scrap.
I live in a relatively large Lower Midwestern city. The general attitude of capital and policymakers in the United States after the 1960s became one of confusion about the purpose of the area between the Appalachian Range and Rockies. California was booming, the cities on the East Coast were moving into a service economic model as their factories had been packed up. Why were these people still here? That applies to cities that used to participate in mercantile capitalism (St. Louis is a wonderful example of this) as well as small towns of 150 people. There's a lack of investment that would simply be unacceptable to people in the other parts of the country. Imagine if Amtrak's Northeast Corridor had the reliability of the various Midwestern routes.
This brings up an interesting partial explanation that we might be able to explore with data. A portion of the healthier and more successful rural population will migrate to urban areas, while a portion of the least healthy and less successful will be stuck and unable to leave rural areas. Urbanization as selection.
Poverty and low labor mobility feed into each other. You have to be able to afford a security deposit and first and last month's rent. And land a job that makes the move worth it.
If you are providing child care, elder care, or disability care you cannot bolt to a city.
if they're healthy and successful why would they leave? the families with college kids of send their chilluns to school, but plenty return. and with high COL exploding in many cities, all the more reason to come home, esp. if their people are already successful in such areas
> if they're healthy and successful why would they leave?
Because they could be even more healthy and even more successful, or simply just happier, elsewhere. People who can leave will always leave more often than people who can't.
> the families with college kids of send their chilluns to school, but plenty return.
And plenty don't. Again, those that never leave stay at a higher rate.
> and with high COL exploding in many cities, all the more reason to come home, esp. if their people are already successful in such areas
The more wealth you have, the less you are deterred by high COL. And COL only goes up in cities because people are willing to pay a premium to live there, often for the economic opportunities.
Why do people do this? It's an observed fact that The United States is still going through the process of urbanization as a lower percentage of the population lives in rural areas compared to urban/suburban [0]. In the rural areas I am personally familiar with the population is decreasing while nearby metropolitan areas have increasing populations.
Since the 18th century humanity has experienced a large concentration inside cities. Who am I to say hundreds of millions of humans made the wrong choice.
I live in a relatively large Lower Midwestern city. The general attitude of capital and policymakers in the United States after the 1960s became one of confusion about the purpose of the area between the Appalachian Range and Rockies. California was booming, the cities on the East Coast were moving into a service economic model as their factories had been packed up. Why were these people still here? That applies to cities that used to participate in mercantile capitalism (St. Louis is a wonderful example of this) as well as small towns of 150 people. There's a lack of investment that would simply be unacceptable to people in the other parts of the country. Imagine if Amtrak's Northeast Corridor had the reliability of the various Midwestern routes.