Except the whole thing about increasing rural white poverty is largely a myth caused by failure to properly analyze the data. Adjusted for cost of living, rural areas have lower poverty rates: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2006/november/adjusting.... Employment suffered less during the Great Recession in rural areas than in urban areas. Many of the places tagged with the travails of white rural people, in the Midwest, have some of the highest incomes for rural people relative to urban people in the country.