New Census figures for 2007
Always interesting to look at the Census figures for each year. They just released estimates for state population change from July 1, 2006 to July 1, 2007.
The most interesting column is the last one, net internal migration. 260K people left California. 190K people left New York. Other states bleeding large numbers (50K or more) of residents were Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and New Jersey. Over 7 years , California has now lost 1.2M people and New York has lost 1.4M people to other states. No big surprises here.
States with >50K inflows were Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. Florida falls off the list of big destination states.
The overall trend remains the same as previous years: people are fleeing places with high taxes and high costs of living to move to places with lower taxes and lower costs of living. Aside from Alaska and New Hampshire, all the states with no income tax once again saw inflows of people. In total, 301K people escaped the vile clutches of state income taxes over that year! Total population increase of these 9 states was 967K, accounting for more than a third of the overall national population increase. The no-sales-tax states also did well, although there aren't as many of them.
Another fun piece of data is always the births/deaths ratio. Of course Utah leads, but Alaska is a close second (when it's cold and dark outside, make babies?). West Virginia doesn't look so good, with almost as many deaths as births. Maine and Pennsylvania also have very low ratios. Rhode Island also doesn't do so well here, as the only state to lose population overall, thanks to an outflow of 10K people, balanced by only 3K immigrants and 3K more births than deaths.
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Comments :
Ohio
We're hemorrhaging people because we never recovered from the last recession. The job market here is very poor. I think I saw that we were 48th in job creation since Bush took office. Our public universities are among the most expensive in the nation. Our public schools are among the worst performing. There isn't a whole lot going for us outside Buckeye football and our professional sports teams.
I'll note for the record that the Republicans held both houses of our legislature (with very large margins), the governorship and all elected executive officers from 2002-2006. Take that to mean whatever you want. I think it says something about one party rule more than it does specifically Republican rule.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Ohio jives with LZ's post.....
Ranking #5 in states according to tax burden in this study.
http://www.retirementliving.com/RLtaxburdens.html
The Ohio Republican party has done a pretty poor job and I think it could be a big factor in handing the WH to the Dems.
Tax Burden Rank
Tax Burden
as a Percentage
of Income
Burden
Per Capita
Per Capita
United States
-
11.0%
$4,422
$40,486
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
46
50
31
13
12
8.8%
6.6%
10.3%
10.3%
11.5%
$3,090
2,729
3,603
3,514
4,965
$35,007
41,469
34,836
31,145
43,338
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
30
8
47
38
32
10.4%
12.2%
8.8%
10.0%
10.3%
$4,509
6,756
3,804
3,962
3,615
$43,512
55,536
43,471
39,782
35,210
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
6
35
22
25
18
12.4%
10.1%
10.8%
10.7%
11.0%
$5,014
3,367
4,594
3,887
4,085
$40,455
33,274
42,428
36,169
37,068
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
15
20
17
2
23
11.2%
10.9%
11.0%
14.0%
10.8%
$4,330
3,568
3,808
5,045
5,341
$38,732
32,673
34,501
36,117
49,324
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
28
14
11
29
34
10.6%
11.2%
11.5%
10.5%
10.1%
$5,419
4,202
4,971
3,103
3,678
$51,297
37,538
43,121
29,582
36,341
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
41
9
36
49
10
9.7%
11.9%
10.1%
8.0%
11.6%
$3,353
4,549
4,127
3,504
5,991
$34,415
38,373
40,916
43,745
51,605
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
40
3
19
39
5
9.8%
13.8%
11.0%
9.9%
12.4%
$3,251
6,522
3,933
3,626
4,597
$33,163
47,176
35,705
36,635
37,020
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
45
37
24
4
26
9.0%
10.0%
10.8%
12.7%
10.7%
$3,248
3,747
4,405
5,291
3,520
$36,077
37,356
40,942
41,809
32,790
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
44
48
43
27
1
9.0%
8.5%
9.3%
10.7%
14.1%
$3,435
3,054
3,533
3,452
5,387
$38,072
35,960
38,005
32,249
38,306
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
33
16
21
7
42
10.2%
11.1%
10.9%
12.3%
9.5%
$4,460
4,604
3,401
4,736
4,340
$43,710
41,530
31,198
38,639
45,881
District of Columbia
-
12.5%
$7,873
$62,852
Burden
The tax burden........
as if having good govt and paying for it is bad.
How about calling it the tax blessing.
There are plenty of folks all around the world that would be thrilled to move to this country and pay this so called 'burden'. IN fact 'they' might even consider it a privelage to be able to pay taxes in the USA!
I'm only half stupid
oh for Gods sakes
just because most other countries suck does not mean we can't want better governance in here ourselves. Having higher tax burden in a state does not equate to better or more efficient government with better services. Your generic unsubstantiated platitudes is one of the reasons people on the other side don't debate you.
Tax blessing my ass. If you want more tax blessings, try France.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Yeah yeah it sounds
inane to you doesn't it.
I guess using that argument only works against libs, who suggest abolishing the Patriot Act, or standing up for Human Rights. Then we hear from all the righties........ but, but, but lookit...... everyone in the world wants to move here, because America is the greatest country and all you do is criticize it.
A case of It's Okay if You Are a Republican. Give me a break.
Here's your New Year's kiss. You can kiss me a** ;-)
I'm only half stupid
Are people fleeing Vermont?
qui tacet consentire
Vermont....
I think you'd have to say "yes." (Found in LZ's first link.)
Vermont lost 1788 (net) people to internal migration, they only gained 649 (net) through international migration for a total loss of 1139 people (net.) It would be better to have all of these items as a % of total population, but LZ's table didn't provide that.
Same figures as a % of population....
For funsies
I've taken the tax burden ranking and the % change in state population and put them together in the following graphs:
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
For those of us who do not share your awesome intelligence
Can you help me understand how to interpret these lovely pictures? ;}
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." --R. Heinlein
Since you ask so nicely.
The first is a simple plot of tax burden ranking versus % change in population. the main thing that leaps out is that at the high end of taxes the change in population is pretty consistently negative (i.e. on the left side of the graph the points are clustered) but as the tax burden decreases the correlation becomes very weak (on the right side you have points scattered all over the place).
Now this might be because the lower ranked states actually don't change that much in actual tax burden. Maybe I should substitute tax burden percent and re graph. I think I will if I have some time this afternoon.
The second graph is a multivariate analysis. You use this to determine how strong a correlation you get between multiple measurements. Notice how the points are all over the place? In the case of a strong correlation that won't happen. A strong correlation will result in a fairly tight diagonal line of data points. The reason there are two graphs is that in one tax rank will be x and pop change will be y and the other has them flipped. This makes it really obvious if you have a correlation if it is a direct or inverse correlation.
Above that graph it has something called "correlations." That is a statistical measure of what we are seeing below. Specifically it says the correlation between tax burden rank and % pop change is .4726 where a value of 1 would be a perfect match. usually at work we consider something above .8 to be a decent correlation.
Does that make sense?
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Couldn't resist
I went back and redid the graph using actual tax burden rather than tax burden ranking.
So the first thing that leaps out is the weak correlation we saw before is much worse now, not better. The artificial spacing of the ranking created an impression of a correlation where none actually existed.
Looking at the mulitvariate analysis I included all three, which gives a better impression of the power of multivariate analysis than just two. You can now see that it compares each variable to each other variable, helping to deconvolute what is actually going on. This is a pretty simple one (I've seen ones at work with 8-10 variables all being cross compared).
notice how the multivariate comparison of tax burden vs tax burden ranking is nearly a straight line, and how the correlation factor above is close to 1 (actually close to -1 becasue there is an inverse correlation- high tax means low rank). That is to be expected of course, and gives you an idea of what a strong correlation would look like. Also notice that the correlation factor for tax burden and pop change is weaker than taxburden ranking and pop change. This confirms what we quantitatively noticed from the first graph.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Very helpful, thank you
And the addition of the third item does indeed make the matrix easier to understand for someone who sucked (sigh) at statistical analyses in school.
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." --R. Heinlein
A few comments
You should use the 2000-2007 numbers rather than the 2006-2007 numbers. When we're talking about a single year, the numbers have a fair amount of noise in them. These are just surveys/estimates, not full census results, and so the more years you add up, the more you're measuring the real trends as opposed to random sampling error.
Another example of things that can mess up the numbers when looking at single years: Louisiana lost a bunch of people from 2005-2006 and regained a decent number of them from 2006-2007. This doesn't have much to do with Louisiana's tax structure.
It is almost always best to exclude Alaska from these analyses. Alaska is just a *really* weird state, whether you're talking about its oil wealth, its weather, its darkness for half the year, its extremely low population and population density, or its massive federal subsidies.
It's not clear that "tax burden" is the best variable to use here. Tax friendliness to business (which would take into account, for example, that consumption taxes are likely to be less economically harmful than income taxes) may be a better variable to measure. For example, Nevada does *very* well on the tax friendliness index but is only middle of the road in the "tax burden" numbers. (I think they don't account correctly for Nevada's casino taxes. Nevada is an ultra-low-tax state, and yet somehow in the tax burden numbers it comes out middle of the road.)
And then, should we be using population growth or should we be using net internal migration? I'm somewhat partial to the latter for two reasons:
1. People don't choose where they're born, but they do choose where to move.
2. While immigrants do choose where to live, immigrant influx is likely biased towards border states and coastal states for simple reasons of geographic proximity.
One last one: I've never done this analysis, but another factor that might be good to correct for would be weather... (think "average January temperature")
These are fair points
If you have them I'm happy to use them. I agree that averaging over a set of years is generally going to be better.
I've been using the sources provided just because i was doing this as a quicky analysis, nothing terribly rigorous by any means.
Agreed but for determining a correlation for fifty points one outlier won't make much of a difference. If we want to be more rigorous we should probably throw out hawaii as well.
Do you have the numbers?
A good point. The above table does split out population change into components.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Followup
See the second link in my original post for the 2000-2007 data.
Maybe. It's often shocking how much of an outlier Alaska ends up being. For example, when I look at your graphs, I can pick it out immediately.
Probably.
The Tax Foundation puts out an index
for this too. It includes a "score." It would be nice if their methodology was better disclosed, though when you look at the rankings it's pretty obvious how they weight things. For example, it's quite obvious that they take a *very* dim view of state income taxes.
This is my last day at work this week
and the software I'm using is here (JMP 5.1)
I'm sort of toying with the idea of making a thread with the purpose of inviting people to drop links to various data with the goal of doing a series of multivariate analysis graphs.
We'd need a central question to ask (it could still be "why do people leave some states and go to others?").
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Housing
My guess is you'd see a stronger correlation between housing costs
and internal immigration than what you see here with tax burden. If you look at the top 11 population losers, CA, NY, MI, NJ, IL, OH, MD, MA, CT, RI and HI, eight of them are in the top 10 highest housing costs. Every state where the average housing is over $250,000 lost population to other states.
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
Challenge accepted
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Agree
I'd go one step further and say: most people aren't so much fleeing high taxes or high housing costs as high costs of living in general.
Moving from CA to TX didn't just reduce my tax bill and my housing bill -- it also reduced my electric bill, my food expenses, the price of gas, and many other things.
Direct taxes are just one aspect of the cost of living. What people miss, though, is that those high taxes end up getting embedded in the cost of goods and in lower wages. California has about a 9% corporate income tax, for example. This tax will find its way into prices and wages.
The same is true of many other hidden/indirect taxes. Another classic example is commercial property taxes. Commercial property taxes are often *much* higher than residential property taxes.
Another factor that people don't tend to notice is unionization. One of the reasons that my groceries are cheaper now is that I buy most of them from nonunion Walmart rather than unionized Safeway. Texas has very weak unions, while California has fairly strong unions.
Now I'm just showing off
Cost of living data from here.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Interesting point! Thx.
I'm only half stupid
No argument here
The most odd thing about Ohio in the past decade or so is that we went from being a low tax state to being a high tax state ... all under the control of the ORP.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
There may be something to what you're saying, LZ
but I think it's a little more complex than that.
Basically, states in Southern US, on average, are gaining. This could be weather related. Older, Colder Northern states are generally flat or losing.
Within states, there are other stories, some parts of states are losing population while others are gaining. And depending on the location of some states, there are states that gain in some counties even the state as a whole is flat or declining because some regions lie near large cities in other states that are losing population.
So, yes, taxes are a part of it but weather, sparser population and crime can also play a role.
States like Texas and Alabama
Also gained population partly due to displacement by Katrina.
qui tacet consentire
That was reversed this year
I don't know if you can still find the 2005-2006 numbers, but Louisiana lost a ton of people that year and regained a bunch of them this year.
Of course it's undeniable that events like Katrina have significant effects in the short run. Best to use the 2000-2007 numbers to pick out the long-term trends.
Yes, that's part of it
But the "cold weather" theory clearly cannot explain many of the trends. To throw out a few:
Why is New Hampshire doing so much better than all of the neighboring states? (2006-2007 was an anomaly for some reason here; it's done quite well for 2000-2007)
Why is South Dakota doing better than North Dakota or Nebraska or so many other cold, sparsely populated plains states?
Why is California bleeding so many people, despite its near-perfect weather?