I don't come quite from your background, but my social circle growing up overlapped with that world a bit. There's a huge gap between the bone-in poverty world

I don't come quite from your background, but my social circle growing up overlapped with that world a bit. There's a huge gap between the bone-in poverty world and the "rest" of the US; ambition, expectations, mobility, money, interactions with authority, etc. It's the case that able and motivated people leave, and they better themselves, and the people left behind are, sadly, less able, less motivated, less something. This accelerates the cycle. It's not just city/country (although that seems to be a big part of it): out West there is still a lot of money in industrial farming of wheat, potatoes, etc. Those communities are chugging along. It's the communities which have no industry that fail.