In June last year, I wrote that data show that families with children are fleeing the Twin Cities. Sadly, that is not all.
Writing for the Institute for Family Studies, Lyman Stone notes that:
More families with children moved out of Minnesota in 2021 and 2022 than moved into the state, according to our analysis of the American Community Survey. In fact, Minnesota ranked in the worst third for family migration, as one of 18 states in the nation that saw more families leave than move into the state.
This is part of a broader trend:
Minnesota is no outlier. Parents are not generally moving towards states with the preferred family policies of progressives. They are moving out of these states, including Democratic states, like New York, California, Massachusetts, and Oregon, all well known for their liberal family policies. Blue states that voted for Democratic presidential candidates in both 2016 and 2020 lost 213,000 families with children in 2021 and 2022 (a 0.7% net decline), while red states that voted for President Trump in both elections gained 181,000 families (a 0.6% net gain). Meanwhile, purple states that flipped between the two parties in the last presidential elections gained 38,000 families (a 0.4% gain).
What we are now seeing in the United States is that families with children, by the hundreds of thousands, are moving away from states with avowedly generous family policies—from refundable child tax credits to universal school lunches—and to states without these policies. California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Oregon, for instance, have at least two of these policies. And yet in recent years, all five of these progressive states have seen more families leave than move into them.
A few more conservative states do show up in the list of major family-losing states, like Louisiana and Alaska, but the list of family-gaining states is, likewise, dominated by red states: Idaho, Montana, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee all show up in the top third for state net family migration. Of course, some politically middle-of-the-road states get a lot of families, too, like Arizona and Georgia, as well as Democratic-leaning New Hampshire and Nevada. Here’s the net migration-driven growth rate in the number of families with children for each state in 2021 and 2022:
Of the causes for this phenomenon, Stone writes:
Obviously, a lot of this movement was related to COVID, with families fleeing cities looking for suburban and rural places with more space, places where remote work for parents was easier. But predominantly red and purple states in the Sunbelt and Rocky Mountain West were also more likely to have school districts that re-opened more quickly amidst the pandemic than many blue states, as well as new school choice laws that make it easier for parents to send their kids to better schools. Economically, these states have also attracted parents looking for places with lower taxes and strong job growth. Finally, red states have generally resisted letting their schools and sports be guided by avant-garde gender theories. All these educational, economic, and cultural factors help explain the red state appeal to families with children looking to relocate.
Ultimately, it seems, families move for the same reasons most people do: away from economic lethargy and towards prosperity.