In 1900 about 40% of Americans lived in urban areas, and the balance lived in rural America. In 2014, as calculated by tradingeconomies.com, the percentage of Americans living in rural areas was 18.55%. The advantage of urban areas is that virtually all of life's amenities are readily available, such as: transportation, communication, electricity, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, schools, entertainment and so on. That isn't to say that these things in some other form aren't typically available in rural areas, as they may well be, but certainly it is indicative that city life offers more modernity, convenience and variety in virtually all aspects of life that just aren't readily available in rural areas. Of course, one caveat amongst many, is that all of the really good things that you might desire in urban life, cost money, or its money equivalency, so that although there may be great riches and services in city life, that doesn't necessarily mean they are available for the likes of you, especially if you are poor. In fact, if you are poor in an urban area, you will often find yourself, not only segregated physically from real money and wealth, but also subjected to more arbitrary law and rules that keep you in your place. Not only that, but because of the guidelines and perverse incentives of the welfare state, you often will find that the most underprivileged of urban residents aren't particularly skilled at much of anything, including work ethics and responsibility, and are therefore not only effectively wards of the State, but in the manner of speaking, totally dependent on the State for their upkeep and welfare.
There was a time back in America when it was far more rural, back before the great mechanization of agricultural and back before the great migration of the underclass to the northern and upper Midwest States, to which in this previous time many of the poor and disadvantaged worked as sharecroppers and/or tenant farmers. While this existence for those sharecroppers was often exploitive, unfair, and unjust, it did have its merits, namely that the sharecroppers working the land, knew how to grow crops and raise livestock and from this work they were basically self-sufficient and knowledgeable in these areas. While the sharecroppers were often caught in a cycle of debt that would never allowed them to own their own land outright, at least they were able to provide food and shelter for their families, in an era before governmental handouts. In addition, and most importantly, this meant that most tenant farmers knew not only how to raise and to tend agricultural produce, such as corn, soybeans, and oats, but also typically how to manage livestock, such as chickens, and goats, and other barnyard animals. Further, these skills were passed from one generation to the next, so that a poor tenant sharecropping family, knew in effect, how to grow, process, and cook their own food, as well as how to make their own clothes, in addition to maintaining their own shelter and other creature comforts that they needed, to which each member of a given family contributed to the whole.
While sharecroppers were poor and caught up in a system which often exploited them and their labor, at least, they were gainfully employed, dedicated, and self-sufficient with real world skills that they relied upon each and every day--passing on this knowledge from generation to generation. In today's world, the poor are still with us, with far more amenities to make for a better life, however, too often there are undereducated, with little or low skills, little or no future, oppressed, bored, substance abusers, discriminated against, imprisoned, subject to arbitrary violence, and wouldn't know the first thing about how to pluck a chicken or hoeing the soil and probably don't really care.