Do you understand the concept of community? It's incredibly inhumane to suggest that McDowell County residents should be split-off from their friends and family for the sake of saving money on transfer payments.
Is it not more inhumane to leave people plastered in poverty with piss poor prospects of escaping it unless they escape the area as well?
But the economic support extended family structures provide is what makes people stay in such communities, not just the moral & emotional support. How many people, especially in poorer communities, strongly rely at least from time to time on family to help them find a job, let them live with them for a period, sometimes provide direct financial support in hard times, etc.? Not to mention extended family is the de facto child care provider in this country for working parents.
I'm not talking about lazy losers still living with and mooching off their parents well into their 30's, but rather a basic social AND economic support system families in distressed communities rely on. It's not just whether a family member needs such (usually) temporary support at that moment that affects whether they're willing to move to greener pastures, but the fact that such a familial safety net is there in that community as insurance if things go from bad to worse that keeps people from bravely pioneering to the big city.
Yes, Pittsburgh and Columbus may have better economic prospects than southern West Virginia, but if you leave home there's no one there to put you up if you miss a couple rent payments, or watch the kids for free while you work two jobs, or even to help you find one of those entry-level low paying jobs that don't pay much better than back home anyway. And if you get stuck in that situation your only prospects are to lose the new job, uproot the kids again, lose your security deposit and moving costs, then move back home again.
Familiarity plus not wanting to miss Momma and Uncle Joe isn't the biggest reason people won't leave such economically distressed hometowns. Moving to a big city with a higher GDP growth rate may sound good in theory, but it means giving up the tangible economic insurance of extended family and friends. And to less-skilled workers that known quanitity of a safety net is what matters.
The same theory holds true to some degree for poor urban areas as it does for poor rural areas, fwiw.
