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.
