This was what I grew up in and around.  There's pretty much ONE way to escape it - outside programs such as those on the Reservations that give people training and education in return for coming back to the community and using the education or training to serve the community. The only other way to escape is to quite literally ESCAPE.  Like as in run with your life.  Because without opportunities, you might be able to learn values, but you will ALMOST CERTAINLY remain in or on the edge of poverty your entire life if you stay at home.  It won't matter what you do. Because while it is "cheaper" to live outside the city, it's not THAT much cheaper.  Mostly rural pay just well, doesn't pay.

The odds against you get even worse in many rural areas because of the contamination that comes with certain rural industries like agriculture and mining.  Not only do you have to fight lack of opportunity, but what jobs are there carry higher risk of job related disability or of a shorter career (let's face it, our bodies weren't meant to do things like harvest in the sun or mine coal or uranium for 50 years) and the environment itself creates a higher risk of congenital disabilities.  There's some suspicion that's where many of my "physical" disabilities come from - random mutations thanks to ground water contamination in the farming area where I grew up. I'm also one of a large number from my home town with fertility issues (some are infertile like me, others have had trouble with horrid defects in the children they've been able to have or had children only to have them develop nasty and rare early childhood cancers).  Then this all gets compounded by things like lack of local access to services like medical care and particularly to major and specialty care.  My Mom had to take Dad to a town an hour away for care almost weekly for a good part of the last few years of his life.  They finally "moved to town".  And let's not forget that education in small towns is often almost an afterthought.  It's like it's there just because the law says they have to have one or it gives the town an excuse for a football team. 

So ultimately, even with a bright child and a LOT of guidance and motivation, it's a lot like trying to escape quicksand unless there's a program in place like the Reservations often use.  Worse, I've seen many rural locations actively resist - or at least community leadership actively resists - anything that would let those in poverty do anything about THEIR situations.  Like if a location could have a webhosting center OR a call center, they'll vote against both or approve a SMALL call center - knowing full well that the call center will be part time and minimum to near minimum jobs.  That won't help anyone escape poverty.  Or if two factories are options, one skilled and one unskilled but both requiring approximately the same community and environmental resources, it'll be the one that pays the least and hires the fewest that gets approved.  If either does.  I've seen this time and time again in rural communities. Or like in the Four Corners, it was at one point suggested to have an Artists' Co-op so the artists could sell their wares directly to the people.  That was shot down when the pawn shops made it clear they wouldn't buy from anyone EVER AGAIN if they heard of them selling ONCE via the Co-op.  People couldn't afford to risk that.

Then if we do escape, we tend to get to fight a few layers of "isms".  Racism, classism, ruralism (boy can some city people spot - and dislike - a country person from a mile away, esp. if it's clear they're not "just" a tourist), educationism (since rural people are often less educated or more poorly educated), etc.  I suppose some of those aren't words you'll find in a dictionary, but they make the point well enough...