Some people may want to stay close to family and friends, especially when they need their support. That is understandable, but then it's their own choice, and they are probably content about it.
For those who are unhappy about their situations, why don't they just move?
I was one of the very lucky ones, and I'm now living in an affluent suburban community, watching my son attend the kinds of schools that I'm assuming you got to attend. (I'm assuming this by your comment, which shows someone who almost certainly doesn't have a deep understanding of poverty or areas with high poverty.)
Notice that the site has a median rent listed for this county of a little over $300. Think about that: You are somebody who lives in a place with a $300 rent, which means that a given landlord, when presented with the income of the area's renters, can only fill a unit if they charge $300 a month. Yes, everyone is that poor. Work is few and far between, incomes are very low, and savings are non-existent. How can you save when you can barely get by?
So without savings, how do you finance a move to a place? How do you pay a security deposit that is, by itself, triple your current rent, plus the first month's rent, assuming you landed a job in this richer area?
The education offered sucks, period. I went to college on a scholarship, and I was completely unprepared for my classes compared to the other students. I had to work over 30 hours a week while in engineering school to pay my rent/food/books/etc, which put me at a disadvantage compared to my peers. On top of that, I didn't have the knowledge base my peers had. When I graduated high school in 1999, my school only had 4 computers with internet connections for a student body of roughly 900. This is typical of poor, rural schools. How could I have learned to program like my peers from the DC suburbs?
Your characterization that these people have made a choice to not move suggests that they ever had a choice to begin with. Most of them don't, and your comment, to people like me who had to claw ourselves out of the trap, smacks of self-righteousness and contempt.
Also, let us not underestimate the value of support networks from friends and family, living in an area may include aid for child care (grandparents/aunts/uncles/etc) and so forth.
I've also met a fare share of poor people here in Canada. And most of them choose to be so, by choosing work in arts and music, spending money on parties and drinks, or not follow the worker bee lifestyle and work as little as possible. I don't look down upon them, as they seem to enjoy their chosen lifestyles. Although I have a feeling that the poor you are talking about might be different from what I see.
I've also met many poor immigrants who are not as fortunate as I am, working as taxi drivers, manual labours and/or minimum wage jobs. But most of them don't seem to be seriously stuck, as in that they could afford to move to a different city if there is no job locally.
So I'm sorry that my question smacks contempt, which is half-true (for people who don't work hard and blame others for their misfortunes). But I am also ignorant about what it's like to be poor in America. Is it really that much worse than Canada?
Canada has a comparatively large welfare state, and far better public schools. In the United States, public schools receive the majority of their funding from the local town/county taxes. This means that a poor person who lives in a poor area will attend a bad school.
I could go on, but take a look at the data. On basically any metric, the US is a much worse place to be poor than Canada.
The conclusion is true, but the reason given is not true in many parts of the United States: e.g., California (and I don't think California is the only state with similar rules) requires equal per-pupil public spending statewide, so difference in local tax bases within the state do not affect spending (but schools in poor areas have unique challenges that increase costs, and often get less additional support from outside sources to supplement their equalized funding, so they still end up disadvantaged.)
That poor.
Let's all agree that education is the key here, right? Bootstraps and "teaching them to fish", right? Well, how are you going to get anyone to teach in the poor areas when it's losing people to "hitchhike to someplace better"? So, the key to improving the shitty and fraud-filled situation in, say, West Virginia or Alabama, where poverty is like a 1 out of 4 situation, is to leave by foot?
If you're young and ambitious, you can go anywhere, try anything. Tent in the state park while you interview. Visit the food bank. A poor job in a wealthy area is yards better than a poor job in a poor area. The services are better to start with.
While this won't work if you have absolutely no money and no job, it's certainly an option for many people that want to get to a better area..but can't afford an apartment.
When you are poor, you need to get creative if you want to survive.
How about born this poor? How about 2 generations of this poor? How about "there are no bootstraps" poor? That is 24% of Alabama and 20% of West Virginia (I always preemptively point those two out to be fair to both major American races, so that no "it's all the Black folks fault they're poor" shenanigans come out here as they do in other discussions about poverty, as West Virginia is nearly 95% white).
>While this won't work if you have absolutely no money and no job
In other words, the very definition of poverty.
So, be born with nothing, with a single mother that works 3 jobs, never sees you for more than 2 of your waking hours as you get tossed from one strange neighbor in the trailer park/projects to another, you can't concentrate on studies because teachers don't care that you're hungry at home (not at school, I know they have free lunch programs) because they get paid nothing, you share textbooks in class and can't take them home, you hear gunshots or people fighting next door or carousing all night so you can't sleep, and now you're supposed to graduate, get into college, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and get that juicy Android dev ops manager job in Silicon Valley? Or, as JoeAltmaier says, walk to a better life with rosy opportunities?
Is that how they're supposed to do it?
Because moving to a new area isn't free.
> Some people may want to stay close to family and friends, especially when they need their support. That is understandable, but then it's their own choice, and they are probably content about it.
Recognizing that preserving a support network that certainly exists along with the poor conditions that certainly exists is likely the best choice available, even though moving might provide slightly better odds of material improvement but with a weaker support network in the highly-likely event of poor outcomes does not equal being content with the poor set of choices available.
> For those who are unhappy about their situations, why don't they just move?
The ones who can afford to (often because, even if poor, they have stronger or more geographically diverse support networks, or they are lucky enough to secure, rather than merely speculate on the chance of, better circumstances elsewhere before moving) do, which is one reason the places with poor opportunities go into a downward spiral.
Anecdotal, but, I do know people who have moved because of the promise of work elsewhere. Some wound up benefiting and turning their life around. Some wound up on the street. These people were all young with no children. As a parent, it would be very difficult for me to make the decision to move somewhere on a gamble that things would turn out ok. I'd honestly probably choose to continue to barely scrape by, but still feed my kids and keep a roof over their heads than I would gamble that we become homeless.
I'm glad I "won the life lottery" and don't have to make these kinds of choices for my family. I have a lot of compassion for those who do.
Its got to do with being comfortable with your place in society, and feeling safe to have some position at all. Its risky to leap into a new place, with new rules.
Turn it on its head: would you move to a poor, rural area? Why not? Partly because you wouldn't know how to survive there.
The government is also to blame in places like Africa. How can you expect to leave or even prosper when government officials, who are supposed to protect you, are nothing more than criminals?
When you're too poor to fill your gas tank, how do you afford to move across country to an area with more opportunity?
When you're living with room mates, and still barely able to make your rent, how do you get a new place some where else?
Obviously you're not poor, but don't stick your head in the sand and pretend it's not a problem. If it were that easy to fix being poor, it would have been solved ages ago.