Rural America, where most of the much-maligned redneck population lives, ain’t as bad as all of those elitists want you to believe.

Researchers at the University of Illinois proved it by studying unemployment rates, poverty rates, high school drop-out rates, and housing conditions across the country. The results: One in five rural counties scores better than the nation as a whole on all of those measurements.

Rural counties in the Southeast and Southwest scored poorly, but half of the rural counties in the heartland (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and parts of six adjacent states) are prosperous. “The results supported what many rural people believe to be true — civically engaged religious groups and a common ancestry can really matter,” said economist and planner Andrew Isserman.

A related master’s thesis that studied two prosperous counties linked “local churches, a shared ethnic identity, small colleges, locally owned manufacturing, innovative farmers, and extraordinary cooperation and civic engagement to job creation, education, and housing.”

In other words, all of the characteristics that elitists hate about “flyover country” make flyover country a great place to be if you want to prosper.

Enlightened rednecks didn’t need a study to convince us; we’ve known it all along.