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.
