Obviously you've seen the same documentary or lib news blurb about some poor, feckless hillbilly who can't find a job in his neck of the woods or top of the mountain. The tv narrator tries to make your heart bleed with the sad tale of Cletus who just can't seem to find any luck. As you have stated the suggestion that maybe Cletus should head for the big city and jobs is totally ignored.
By the way I've also seen that same narrative in other areas of the country...like Merlin in northern Wisconsin my home state. Again the obvious solution for Cletus and Merlin to leave their jobless areas and move to areas with jobs is not part of the "news" story. Apparently big business is supposed to build huge factories in these relatively poorer areas whether it's practical or not.
They'd get in those cars, stuff in the kids, stuff in some of their belongings and head North to Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, Springfield, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee ~ wherever, until they ran out of gas.
Million and a half folks ended up in strange, distant, Northern cities, and that's where they got help from folks like my mom and dad.
We had "shoe drives" ~ collecting old shoes for the kids who had no shoes ~ or socks. There were sock drives. There were shirt drives. I went to school in winter with kids who were fresh up from Harlan and Hazard who had no coats, so there were coat drives.
You might want to romanticize living off in the mountains, free with nature all about you, but you still 'gotta eat, your children need milk, everybody needs clothes, shoes, belts, hats, winter coats, K2 for the heater, a heater for the K2, tarpaper for the shack they let you built out back on the "second lot" ~
Christmas came to our house, and the houses of most the native Hoosiers in Central Indiana in two ways ~ first there were the poor migrants to be taken care of, then there was the family.
And I never knew a person who did not in some way help the migrants ~ either to survive, or to settle.
Anyway, Merry Christmas.