In J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy, he uses his life story to critique the notion that economic insecurity is the root cause of the hardship his fellow hillbillies must endure. Rather, Vance argues that the very culture he claims to love is actually responsible for the social decay that he and millions of others have had to live in, and that hillbillies’ inability to recognize this has led to their political estrangement.
To fully grasp the impact of hillbilly culture on the level of social decay that many hillbillies fall victim to, it is imperative to first have a firm grasp of the history of the Rust Belt and the current cycle of poverty. For generations, the states of Appalachia were quite poor, and the vast majority of jobs: such as coal mining and farming, required hard physical labour and often received very little pay or job security. However, when the Second World War ended in 1945 the American economy began an unprecedented period of growth in the
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While most economists stress an emphasis on education as the best way to improve your success in life, few hillbillies accept this. As Vance writes, “Most won’t graduate from college… Students don’t expect much from themselves, because the people around them don’t do very much”. Vance even recognizes how lucky he was to have his grandparents intervene in his life, because without them he almost certainly would have succumbed to the environmental pressures around him. And this lack of focus on education is nothing new for hillbilly culture either, as the vast majority of those employed within the factories did not attend post-secondary education. The only difference is that in the modern economy education is critical, yet hillbillies are either unable, or unwilling, to recognize this