I think it's also pointing to something more than just poverty - it's when you're in a situation where potentially everyone you know is in poverty. You're not even passing someone on the street who looks middle-class, let alone rich. Even if you suddenly had millions of dollars, there would be no where to spend it. If you opened a business you would have trouble finding customers or skilled employees. The first thing you would do is just move somewhere else.

When you're somewhere that's more mixed by class, it's maybe easier to see your way back out of poverty in a way that you can't when you're never seeing anything else.