This report reminds me of a passage in "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. Prestigious foundations such as the Gates Foundation pumped millions (billions?) of dollars into smaller scale education because a report identified that the worst performing schools had large classrooms in poor, rural counties. Much later, a second review of the data revealed that the best primary schools had large classrooms in poor, rural counties. The results were merely statistical outliers caused by small sample data.

It would not surprise me if the easiest places to live have identical demographics and characteristics as the hardest places to live. The correlation might be dual, but the causation is near impossible to identify.

Edit: long term memory fail.