The boys perception in the story seems rather naive. He is seeing the outward differences between country and city life, but blind to the hardship and oppression, as well as the internal struggles families would be facing in the day to day life.
If he were to change places with another boy in the countryside, he would soon notice the oppression he is under and what poverty is really like. For families growing up in villages like these, it takes an enormous amount of work, effort, and lucky breaks to ever become prosperous enough to find a way out, and this is how the cycle of intergenerational poverty instills itself within a community.
If a boy from the poor village were to visit middle class suburbia in the city with their father what do you think they might see?