Why is the rural Midwest "easier" to live in than the rural/suburban South?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

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Conventional wisdom would suggest that living in most rural areas would be a disadvantage for a non-wealthy person due to greater scarcity of public resources and lack of employment opportunities, but this chart appears to suggest that this is not the standard for all regions of the country.

Why would someone be better off living in the middle of eastern Nebraska or the Oklahoma panhandle than a suburb of Memphis?

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Conventional wisdom would suggest

I'm sorry, but what conventional wisdom? Urban and suburban convictions of their own surpreme splendidness?

A lot of rural places have a surplus of jobs compared to their population due to natural resources. Housing and living costs are a lot cheaper so you get a lot further on a smaller income than you would in a big city. A family in the rural Midwest can live a comfortable middle-class life style on the same income that would leave a family in New York barely scrapping by. 

As to why Southern/Appalachian rural areas are horribly off compared to the Midwest, there are a lot of historic, demographic, and political reasons for that.   

[Oldiesfreak1854]

I don't understand that, especially since people are moving from the Midwest to the South in droves.

[TJ in Oregon]

It's probably not really "easier to live" there so much as the people living there have a higher income and not much higher cost of living.

I don't understand that, especially since people are moving from the Midwest to the South in droves.

That tends to be from dying rust belt towns to the handful of booming sunbelt cities where they either have a job or think they can easily get a job. People aren't fleeing the Midwest in droves to live unemployed in rural Mississippi, or West Virginina, or Clay County, KY. If you look at the south, the large metro areas are doing fine, it's the rural places that are struggling.

[memphis]

Problem is you don't know anything about the geography of Memphis. We have relatively few incorporated suburbs for a city our size, but the ones we have are (to varying degrees) mass affluent. This is particularly true for Germantown and Collierville, but Bartlett, Arlington, and Lakeland, for all their ticky tacky pointy house subdivisions, are still a helluva lot nicer than some desolate hellhole on the Plains. Your map in question only shows counties.Of the counties that border Shelby, only DeSoto, MS is predominantly suburban in population, and even there, it's still low density exurban and very new, with a strong underlying rural feel in much of the county. Fayette and Tipton, TN, Crittenden AR, and Marshall MS, remain authentically rural places, with the usual sorts of Dirty South rural problems.  

[pbrower2a]

Many rural counties of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and northern Maine are awful. Although the urban areas of California are good, the Central Valley except in the I-80 corridor is a poor place to get a start.

Rural areas have lower costs of living. They also have more farm laborers whose kids generally do badly in school, especially if migrant. Farm families do about as well as their urban counterparts.  But remember -- farm and ranch families are generally middle-class. I figure that farm families are able to control what their kids get access to.

Southern cities, with few exceptions, are awful places in which to live. They get large numbers of people leaving rural Southern towns and collect people who came in with no advantages. Texas and Florida (if you call them Southern) don't do so badly. But those cities  (like Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Miami, and Tampa-St. Pete) do OK. Georgia does have Atlanta, which apparently does OK. They can attract people from the Midwest.      

The rural South has little to attract anyone from elsewhere. It is a cultural void; it has few recreational activities.  
  

[Padfoot]

The rural south fairs horribly on almost all 6 metrics used to create this map (in no particular order):

1. % with Bachelor's Degree - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._States_by_Education_attainment

2. median household income - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income#States_ranked_by_median_household_income

3. unemployment rate - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_unemployment_rate#See_also

4. disability rate - (no convenient wikipedia link)

5. life expectancy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy

6. obesity - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#Prevalence_by_state

Notice anything about which states tend to be ranked worst?

[DC Al Fine]

Conventional wisdom would suggest

I'm sorry, but what conventional wisdom? Urban and suburban convictions of their own surpreme splendidness?

A lot of rural places have a surplus of jobs compared to their population due to natural resources. Housing and living costs are a lot cheaper so you get a lot further on a smaller income than you would in a big city. A family in the rural Midwest can live a comfortable middle-class life style on the same income that would leave a family in New York barely scrapping by. 

I recall a study that suggested that $100k in NYC would buy roughly the same lifestyle that $38k would in a small city in the South. If you're a service worker making not much over minimum wage, you'll stretch your dollars much further outside the major metros.

[DC Al Fine]

Come to think of it, smaller cities in the Sun Belt seem like the easiest places to live. Combine relatively low unemployment with low cost of living and you have a recipe for a healthy working class.

[pbrower2a]

Conventional wisdom would suggest

I'm sorry, but what conventional wisdom? Urban and suburban convictions of their own surpreme splendidness?

A lot of rural places have a surplus of jobs compared to their population due to natural resources. Housing and living costs are a lot cheaper so you get a lot further on a smaller income than you would in a big city. A family in the rural Midwest can live a comfortable middle-class life style on the same income that would leave a family in New York barely scrapping by. 

I recall a study that suggested that $100k in NYC would buy roughly the same lifestyle that $38k would in a small city in the South. If you're a service worker making not much over minimum wage, you'll stretch your dollars much further outside the major metros.

If one actually paid rent to live in NYC and worked for the minimum wage, one would literally starve to death unless one did dumpster-diving.

As a rule, a high cost of living correlates with economic opportunities. The opportunities in New York City are far more varied than those in the Rural South. New York City is a tough place to live if one is not from there and is not at the top of his game.

On the other side -- what is so easy about making a living as a farm laborer? 

 

[DC Al Fine]

Conventional wisdom would suggest

I'm sorry, but what conventional wisdom? Urban and suburban convictions of their own surpreme splendidness?

A lot of rural places have a surplus of jobs compared to their population due to natural resources. Housing and living costs are a lot cheaper so you get a lot further on a smaller income than you would in a big city. A family in the rural Midwest can live a comfortable middle-class life style on the same income that would leave a family in New York barely scrapping by. 

I recall a study that suggested that $100k in NYC would buy roughly the same lifestyle that $38k would in a small city in the South. If you're a service worker making not much over minimum wage, you'll stretch your dollars much further outside the major metros.

If one actually paid rent to live in NYC and worked for the minimum wage, one would literally starve to death unless one did dumpster-diving.

As a rule, a high cost of living correlates with economic opportunities. The opportunities in New York City are far more varied than those in the Rural South. New York City is a tough place to live if one is not from there and is not at the top of his game.

On the other side -- what is so easy about making a living as a farm laborer? 

Who said anything about farm labor? I'm talking about small to mid size cities.

[bedstuy]

Conventional wisdom would suggest

I'm sorry, but what conventional wisdom? Urban and suburban convictions of their own surpreme splendidness?

A lot of rural places have a surplus of jobs compared to their population due to natural resources. Housing and living costs are a lot cheaper so you get a lot further on a smaller income than you would in a big city. A family in the rural Midwest can live a comfortable middle-class life style on the same income that would leave a family in New York barely scrapping by. 

I recall a study that suggested that $100k in NYC would buy roughly the same lifestyle that $38k would in a small city in the South. If you're a service worker making not much over minimum wage, you'll stretch your dollars much further outside the major metros.

You can't possibly have the same lifestyle in a small city in the South as you would in NYC.  And, anecdotally I make around $100k per year and live here quite comfortably. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Conventional wisdom would suggest

I'm sorry, but what conventional wisdom? Urban and suburban convictions of their own surpreme splendidness?

A lot of rural places have a surplus of jobs compared to their population due to natural resources. Housing and living costs are a lot cheaper so you get a lot further on a smaller income than you would in a big city. A family in the rural Midwest can live a comfortable middle-class life style on the same income that would leave a family in New York barely scrapping by. 

I recall a study that suggested that $100k in NYC would buy roughly the same lifestyle that $38k would in a small city in the South. If you're a service worker making not much over minimum wage, you'll stretch your dollars much further outside the major metros.

You can't possibly have the same lifestyle in a small city in the South as you would in NYC.  And, anecdotally I make around $100k per year and live here quite comfortably. 

What exactly is it you could get in New York that you wouldn't be able to get in a mid-sized city anywhere else in the US, that isn't something you'd only want to do on a vacation?

The point is that with that kind of income you'd be able to have own a your nice house in the rural area with a swimming pool, while still having money over to travel or shop or what-ever you'd want to do, while it really won't get you especially far at all in any bigger city.       

[Reginald]

Why is the rural Midwest "easier" to live in than the rural/suburban South? Because it scored better.

Remember that this map is at least in part a reflection of what the NYT deems Important. Which is apparently only six variables (some of which likely have considerable overlap)... That's obviously not to say that there's not any truth to the claim that it's harder in general to live in rural MS than in rural New England or Wyoming; I would just advise against reading too much into the nitty gritty that they're putting on display here.

[muon2]

To illustrate the impact of the variables, consider the following two counties. Meigs county TN (pop 11,753) is a rural county that sits along the Tennessee river and has a county seat 47 mi from Chattanooga (pop 167,674). Lyon county IA (pop 11,581) is a rural county that sits along the Missouri river and has a county seat 32 mi from Sioux Falls (pop 153,888). Both counties are over 95% white. They sound pretty similar based on this level of geography.

Now look at their scores. Meigs has a median income of $33,492, 7.8% college educated, 9.9% unemployment, 2.4% disabled, life expectancy 74.1 years, and 41% obese. Lyon has a median income of $49,727, 16.3% college educated, 2.7% unemployment, 0.3% disabled, life expectancy 79.3 years, and 35% obese. No surprise that out of 3,135 counties, Meigs is 2,932 and Lyon is 321.

I didn't spend much time looking for these counties, I just picked two from their respective regions that were rural, equal population, and with some similar demographics. You could find many similar examples in short order. Note they they vary a lot on most all the measures, so my guess is that no matter what socioeconomic variables one thinks is important these two will tend to be quite different in overall score. With better education, more jobs, and income to match, arguably rural Midwestern life is not as difficult as that of the South.

[jimrtex]

To illustrate the impact of the variables, consider the following two counties. Meigs county TN (pop 11,753) is a rural county that sits along the Tennessee river and has a county seat 47 mi from Chattanooga (pop 167,674). Lyon county IA (pop 11,581) is a rural county that sits along the Missouri river and has a county seat 32 mi from Sioux Falls (pop 153,888). Both counties are over 95% white. They sound pretty similar based on this level of geography.

Now look at their scores. Meigs has a median income of $33,492, 7.8% college educated, 9.9% unemployment, 2.4% disabled, life expectancy 74.1 years, and 41% obese. Lyon has a median income of $49,727, 16.3% college educated, 2.7% unemployment, 0.3% disabled, life expectancy 79.3 years, and 35% obese. No surprise that out of 3,135 counties, Meigs is 2,932 and Lyon is 321.

I didn't spend much time looking for these counties, I just picked two from their respective regions that were rural, equal population, and with some similar demographics. You could find many similar examples in short order. Note they they vary a lot on most all the measures, so my guess is that no matter what socioeconomic variables one thinks is important these two will tend to be quite different in overall score. With better education, more jobs, and income to match, arguably rural Midwestern life is not as difficult as that of the South.

The rural midwest may have a population that better matches that which can be supported by agriculture.  It is far enough west that water is a problem, so that a family farmer with a horse-drawn plow might not be able to cultivate enough land.  But mechanization of farming and transport, and burgeoning city populations made it possible for larger land-holdings to be successively farmed.  The excess population moved.

In the rural south there were smaller landholdings, and persons sharecropping or subsistence agriculture.   Subsistence is fine, as long as you don't want to buy a car, or own a TV, or need to see a doctor.  Otherwise, it is an alternative spelling for poor.

Meigs County largest factory is a 400-employee yarn spinning mill.  Those can't be high-skilled or high-paying jobs.  It also has a lake along the Tennessee River.  Its population has increased by about 50% - which I suspect is recreation related - lake houses, perhaps retirement homes.  But it would likely be frugal retirees who can stretch their income.  The people who do the work may have made a lifestyle choice.  They can live in the area for less, and enjoy the recreational opportunities.

[pbrower2a]

Could it be differences in the cultures of more cosmopolitan Midwest and the more provincial South?