The Frontier is Still Being Settled
Thoughts on the Regional Patterns in American Migration
In my last post, I provided access to a tool I made offering what I believe to be unprecedented detail regarding state-level migration, at least as far as lay-users are concerned. But before that, I had a post linking to some recent work I’ve done on historic migration. Essentially, I was able to put together a plausible 120-year-long time series of migration for each state. My research on historic migration essentially leads me to make a claim that I know rankles with many people: the big migration “trend” is not “Frostbelt” to “Sunbelt” at all, but rather the continuing strength of the Mountain and Northwestern states, the weakness of California and the mid-Atlantics, and the moderate rise of some states in the South and the Plains. Not quite as catchy.
I illustrated this point by showing graphs of specific states. But some readers had a concern with that: maybe the states I identified as strong performers in otherwise weaker regions get all their inflows from nearby states, and vice versa for weak performers in strong regions. Isn’t it possible that “inter-regional” migration is systematically different from intra-regional?
Yes, it is! Those readers who asked that had a fair concern. And my data, in order to remain consistent across years, can’t really separate specifically inter-regional from intra-regional net balances per state. However, I can derive the sum of net migration for a given set of states, which equals the net inter-regional migration for that region. As I’ll show, looking at just inter-regional migration in this way does not yield any support for the Sunbelt/Frostbelt hypothesis.
Where Are You Frostbelt?
Why Can’t I Find You?
The chart above uses the regional definitions I outlined based on state-level migration trends in my previous post. For the most part, states within a given region have fairly similar patterns of migration. The exceptions are in the Western Sunbelt, where California dominates the more positive experiences of Nevada and Arizona (though New Mexico and Hawaii look more like California), and in the South, where Texas and Florida show less of a recent rise. Yes, you heard me right. If you want the details on that peculiarity, go read the original post.
The long decline of the western half of the country stands out like a sore thumb. Once a bustling immigrant destination, the first the Plains, then the Northwest, then the Rockies, then the Western Sunbelt all fell from high inflows. That’s partly just because of rising population as a denominator, but also because raw numbers of migrants fell. The raw numbers fell partly because migration generally became less frequent from 1970 to 2010 (though it rose from 1900 to 1950), but mostly because those areas just became less appealing for migrants.
Meanwhile, although migration into the South has risen (not so much for Florida and Texas), the entire rise occurred between 1930 and 1980. Migration to the south has actually fallen since 1980. And the rising flows to the south long predate the invention of air conditioning or post-war militarization and industrialization. Electrification could play a role alongside other New Deal initiatives.
That flow to the South correlates with declining migration into the Mid-Atlantic states until 1980. But since 1980, the Mid-Atlantic states (including New York) have actually seen improving migration. And, again, worsening migration begins well before post-war suburbanization and urban decay.
The Rust Belt, meanwhile, has seen essentially stable migration for 100 years. Yes, it’s been negative. But it’s been negative and stable. There was no novel exodus from the Rust Belt in the post-war period, in the period after 1970, or any other time. Just a century-long trend of the Rust Belt being really good at manufacturing Americans. The same goes for New England. New England has persistently moderate net migration rates, usually slightly negative, but improving some in recent years. The frostiest parts of the Frostbelt, then, are actually far more resilient than warmer Maryland or New Jersey.
Among the Plains states, there’s no correlation between the winter temperature and the migration record either. And the remarkable thing is that net migration rates to the Plains States have improved more since 1940 than any other region, including the South. There’s no Sunbelt here, there’s just Americans rediscovering the prairie (well, and oil and affordable houses).
The real migration winners are the Rocky Mountain states and the Northwest, both of which show persistently positive net migration rates. These states have great climatological diversity, but none of them can be called unambiguously warm or sunny.
So there’s no Sunbelt and there’s no Frostbelt. Forget those stories. They were never real. Since 1970, inter-regional migration trends have basically remained steady, relocating Mid-Atlantic people (and a smaller number of Rust Belters and New Englanders) to the Rockies, the Northwest, the Plains, and the South.
Greenfields and Frontiers
Speculation on What Americans Really Want
Anyone who’s studied American history or migration has heard about the “safety valve” hypothesis or Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier hypothesis. I don’t want to go too far here, but I have to say, looking at the development of American migration, one can’t help but think there’s a correlation between a region’s relative population density, and its net migration rates.
Such association as may exist has undoubtedly meant different things at different times. In the 19th century and the early 20th century, population density represented availability of arable land for farming. Today, that’s less important. But low population density can reflect availability of land for natural resource exploration (even if there were oil, nobody would frack in downtown New York at almost any price) as well as a reasonable proxy for housing costs and the availability of greenfield development for firms and neighborhoods.
In other words, I’m inclined to think that, insofar as there’s a trend to American migration, it’s a trend towards relative openness. Today’s “frontier” doesn’t need arable land, it needs lower land costs and regulatory burdens for development and natural resource extraction. Yes, dense areas have means of drawing migrants, such as universities and big employers, but the reality is that the masses of people who drive headline migration numbers are probably always going to be cost-sensitive, and that means we’ll continue to see an approximate association between migration and population density as a proxy for the availability of greenfield development, affordable housing, etc.
See my previous post, announcing my new Podcast and presenting my recent foray into historical research.
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I’m a graduate of the George Washington University’s Elliott School with an MA in International Trade and Investment Policy, and an economist at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. I like to learn about migration, the cotton industry, airplanes, trade policy, space, Africa, and faith. I’m married to a kickass Kentucky woman named Ruth.
My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I did not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research. More’s the pity.
