When Americans are motivated to move out of the small town they were born in, it's often because that "small town" is a dying and depopulated hollow shell full of awful, racist, jobless, drug-addicted idiots who are mostly only surviving off of some kind of long-term disability insurance.
Often, with these kinds of places, they aren't a place your family has lived for generations, and nor are they a place you have the opportunity to form any good connections in; rather, they're somewhere your parents had to move to when they lost their jobs/went bankrupt/etc, and so could no longer afford to live anywhere with higher land values.
Everyone living in these places encourages anyone who has any potential at all, to get out as soon as they can.