<p>I've never really given this much thought, but your question is quite valid.</p><p>The thing is that developing countries tend to have extremely low minimum wages. The minimum wage in Nigeria right now isn't even up to 100 dollars, last I checked it was about 18000naira and that's roughly 50 dollars. Jobs like that of artisans and farmers simply don't generate enough income to let people do more than just get by, although this depends on the artisan in question.</p><p>It's hard to picture an artisan in a developing nation make anything significantly more than the minimum wage. Let's consider how much a fresh graduate from developing country makes a month; in Nigeria, when you graduate before most companies employ you, you'll first work as a graduate trainee and earn anything from 40,000-80,000 naira, if we take that as the average salary range of a fresh college graduate, then that means that after graduation you're going to make more than double the average salary of an artisan or a farmer. Knowing this, it's little wonder why people avoid such jobs.</p><p>Your average college graduate in the US earns about 50,000USD a year depending on what you studied so the option still remains for a person to get a college degree then move to a developed country and use the degree to find a job there. Artisans in developed countries earn by far more than graduates in developing countries but without a certificate or some formal documentation that you've actually learned a particular trade, then you can't get a job as an artisan in a developed country, and in places like Nigeria, artisans learn by apprenticeship and rarely by going to technical schools so the option of leaving the country is out of it.</p><p>The truth is that becoming an artisan or a farmer in a developing nation will almost certainly condemn you to a life of poverty, especially if your trade is your major or only source of income, anybody in his or her right mind would run from it.</p>