Where Are Migrants Going? Part I
Key Cities, Differences by Age Group
Now that I’ve identified who migrants are, the next important question is where are they going? Policymakers don’t just care about migration in the abstract, but are actively concerned with whether their state or city or neighborhood is going to be filling up or emptying out.
There are a lot of ways to talk about where migrants are going revolving around whether we care about gross or net migration, and what geographic unit we care about. For my purposes here, I’ll focus on net migration, which shows how much the total population of an area is really being affected by migration. Gross migration flows that cause no net population change are still important, especially if the in-migrants are demographically or economically different from the out-migrants, but when policymakers and the media talk about an area gaining or losing people, they’re usually talking about net migration.
For geographic units, I’ll use two different levels of analysis: metro areas and states. States are rational units to analyze because state governments set policies, while metro areas rarely have governments that set policies. Rather, they represent amalgamations of city and county governments. Even so, metro area data can provide valuable insights for city and county policymakers in those areas. This week will be focused entirely on metro areas.
Migration rates vary widely across metro areas.
In this data, it at first seems like we see some familiar stories like the “Sun Belt” shift to southern states and out-migration in the “Rust Belt” or from California. But there are some surprises too: El Paso, Texas saw the highest out-migration of any metro area I measured (only those with over 500,000 inhabitants in 2012 for this analysis). Explaining why New Orleans, Memphis, or Wichita show up may be tricky too.
Likewise, many of the metro areas benefiting from migration seem easy to explain: southern retiree destinations and trendy college towns dominate the list. But then again, we also see Des Moines, Iowa and Portland, Maine on those lists. Doubtless advocates and residents will sing the praises of both cities, but neither can fit directly into the Sun Belt/Rust Belt stories.
What we can see from this data is that overall regional characteristics don’t determine metro area migration rates. Some other factor is at work besides the demographic decline of the midwest and the rise of southern and western states. And if I look at the full Census components of population change data, it’s easy to come up with more atypical cities: Sioux Falls and Rapid City, South Dakota; Bloomington, Illinois; Louisville, Kentucky; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and other cities in allegedly “declining” regions all show strong migration. Meanwhile, numerous southern and western cities like Hinesville, Georgia; Clarksville, Tennessee; Jacksonville, North Carolina; Yuma, Arizona; Montgomery, Alabama; Las Cruces, New Mexico; or Gainesville, Florida all see net out-migration.
Many explanations for these trends can be found if we break down the data into more granular detail, such as migration within state lines versus across them, as I have in the chart above. Data from the American Community Survey has been available since 2005, allowing an unprecedented level of detail in analyzing migration within the US.
Breaking down these migration rates by age can reveal some important stories (data and visualizations are provided in the links at the end). For example, in North Port-Sarasota net interstate migration is negative for 18–19 year olds (indicating young people leave for college or work after high school graduation), and not particularly high for working-age individuals, but jumps to around 5 percent for individuals over 55. In this case, the Sun Belt retiree story fits reasonably well.
Interestingly, while North Port-Sarasota has low in-state migration overall, it is lowest for, again, 18–19 year olds, but also retirees. Very few retirees move within Florida to go to North Port-Sarasota, indeed the area actually has a negative in-state balance for many older age categories. Apparently, retirees from out of state move into the area, then, after a while, move on to other parts of Florida, or displace native Floridian retirees.
Portland, Maine is a different story. It sees roughly balanced migration between in-state and interstate migrants, but extremely lopsided migration when we break it down by age. Almost 10 percent of the 18–19 year old population migrated out of state in 2013, and another 4.5 percent migrated to elsewhere in Maine: yet the metro area overall had positive migration. This is because it manages to attract reasonably high levels of professional-aged migrants, who represent the bulk of the population. In 2013, interstate migration increased the 30–34 year old population by 6 percent, and in-state migration increased it by another 1.5 percent. This is a much bigger group than 18–19 year olds (or even late retirees, who also saw net out-migration from Portland).
Why is Portland attracting working-age individuals? Maybe it’s creating jobs, improving its public schools, or creating a vibrant urban community. But one way or another, the area is attracting a pretty robust flow of migrants.
So where do all those fleeing young people go? The answer is simple: they go to college, which means college towns. Several college towns show up in this data. Durham-Chapel Hill added 10 percent to its 18–19 year old population through interstate migration, and also increased its 20–24 and 25–29 year old groups. In-state migration boosted its 18–19 group by 17 percent. Net out-migration doesn’t show up until these students (and professors, researchers, and workers) are in their 30s.
A similar pattern emerges in Provo, home of Brigham Young University. It added 17 percent to its 18 -19 population through interstate migration, and 4.5 percent through in-state migration. Interestingly, Provo is far less successful at holding interstate migrants into their late 20s: this may be due to Mormon students going on their mission, or it may be due to Durham-Chapel Hill housing numerous large graduate and PhD programs. Whichever story is true, it teaches a valuable lesson: just having a big school doesn’t give you a migration profile with staying power.
There’s an interesting sidenote here as well: Columbia, SC, home of the University of South Carolina, saw a 39 percent net migration rate in 2013 for 18–19 year olds, though a much smaller in-state attraction. Net migration rates for other age groups weren’t impressive, but that one category suggests USC saw an extraordinarily successful year in attracting out-of-state first year students.
One problem for the Sun Belt/Rust Belt narrative is that cities that seem superficially comparable and geographically close have totally different migration profiles. Consider Nashville and Memphis. The two cities certainly have some differences, but are close geographically, share much in the way of governance, and have similar (if far from identical) histories.
Yet Nashville manages to have positive net interstate migration for every age group except 60–64 year-olds, and over 5 percent net migration for freshmen. That high rate persists well into students’ professional lives. Oddly enough, Nashville loses college freshmen in the in-state migration market, though it has roughly balanced migration for other age groups.
Memphis, meanwhile, does a slightly better job than Nashville at retaining college freshmen on the in-state migration market, but loses over 5.5 percent of its 18–19 year olds to out-of-state migration. Memphis has negative interstate migration rates for every age except 30–34 year olds and those over 75, but both are close to 1 percent, so not extremely high. Moreover, even on in-state migration, Memphis tends to lose more than it gains.
How do we explain this? We might think Nashville has more universities, but Memphis has schools too, including some notable ones. I’ll analyze racial factors in the next post (and show that race does matter for migration), but a big factor is just the economy. Nashville has a bustling economy that is well-integrated with its schools, much as Durham-Chapel Hill offers many highly competitive graduate and PhD programs. Many students not only get good degrees, but they get good degrees that they can use close to their alma maters, so they stay and build a vibrant economic and cultural community.
These are just a few vignettes. At the end of this post, I have links to the migrant age profiles so you can explore them yourself, and in the next post I’ll look at racial factors in migration.
But the key issue to consider is this: sweeping declarations about whole regions of the country attracting migrants don’t hold water. As strange as it may sound, migration is an intensely local activity. People don’t migrate to a region, or even a state or a city, but to a home and to a job. Some states and cities do a better job promoting communities that people want to call home, and where they can make a living. Sometimes there are wider geographical factors to be considered, but by and large, very local factors like university recruitment, integrated job markets, retirement community advertising, social networks with other migrants, housing prices, and policy factors like taxes and regulations play the dominant role.
Cities in “Rust Belt” states are not doomed to a slow death by out-migration, and cities in the Sun Belt don’t automatically attract migrants. Rather, the choices made by communities and their leaders matter for migration.
Start the series from the beginning!
Follow me on Twitter. Follow my Medium Collection at In a State of Migration. I’m a grad student in International Trade and Investment Policy at the George Washington University’s Elliott School. I like to write and tweet about migration, airplanes, trade, space, and other new and interesting research. Cover photo from Unsplash.
