In visits to a number of developing countries I’ve made the same observation: driving from the wealthy, developed part where we were staying, out of the city and into the countryside I’d notice that the very worst poverty seemed to be not in the (technically poorest) countryside where the old, rural life still went on, but on the edges of modernity. The people at the edges of the city had left behind the benefits of the traditional way of life — being self-sustainable, ok nutrition, good air etc. — and were really only experiencing the drawbacks of modern life; few of the benefits.
It’s only a personal observation, but in my reading of history I wonder if the same pattern applies.
I had recently read a book about the 1918 flu, and it had made the point that these urban cities, at the time, required a constant influx of workers, just to replace those deceased.
So, to actually increase the labor pool, required a tremendous amount of human life.
I suspect the higher disease loads and lower fertility rate had a lot to do with that. But maybe not that things were better in rural villages either. Considering all of history rural areas had higher but the population wasn't increasing very fast. That is until you had mechanized farming.
