Fleeing or Flocking?

by Bill Bergman: United Van Lines has published an annual interstate migration study for decades. Looking at that study, along with state government financial conditions and related factors, you typically see that states in bad financial shape also tend to have lower trust in state government, and in turn, higher out-migration in recent years.

In addition to states’ migration trends, United Van Lines recently began publishing an analysis of cities. Using a slightly different method, the moving company reported the 10 cities with the highest net in-migration as well as out-migration.

We took a look at those cities to see how they fare in Truth in Accounting’s latest analysis of financial conditions of the nation’s 50 largest cities. Of the 50 largest municipalities, the average Taxpayer Burden calculated for the nine cities with the highest in-migration is one-fourth as high as the average for cities with the highest out-migration. Four of the cities with the highest out-migration rates were New York, Chicago, Boston and San Diego, according to United Van Lines.

Here’s another way to look at it -- the average Taxpayer Burden for the six states that have the 10 cities with the highest net out-migration runs five times as high as the average of the Taxpayer Burden for the nine states that are home to the top 10 cities for in-migration.

Illinois, New York and New Jersey account for five of the 10 cities with high net out-migration rates in the United Van Lines study. You can see the lists of the cities United Van Lines ranked here.

We will be releasing an updated report on the finances of the 50 largest cities in the US in January 2018.
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Bill Bergman is Director of Research at Truth in Accounting. He is responsible for identifying, collecting and managing State Data Lab's database. This database provides healthy context for understanding state and local government financial conditions. Bergman has over twenty years of financial market experience, including thirteen years as an economist and policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

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