What Migration Patterns Within the U.S. Tell Us About Policy
U-Haul’s release of its annual Growth Index tells us much about the state of red and blue states.
Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and South Carolina, in ascending order, experienced the most one-way U-Haul rentals in 2024.
Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, in descending order, witnessed the largest net emigration according to the U-Haul data.
Some glaring common denominators characterize these two groups of states.
The first, somewhat superficial trait shared by the “grower” states involves voting patterns. They all voted red in the recent presidential election. Four of the five “slower” states voted blue, and the fifth, Pennsylvania, has voted blue from 1992 onward save for twice choosing Donald Trump.
Elections unleash consequences. We grasp this concept better outside of our borders.
The mere fact of the exodus of millions of Venezuelans from their homeland over the last decade instructs even the otherwise ignorant: all is not well. More than one in five Venezuelans live abroad. Marxist economics led to GDP per capita shrinking to less than half its levels a decade ago, runaway inflation that eroded the currency more in a month than the United States experienced with the dollar these last four years, and political oppression to the degree of rigging the most recent presidential election, begins to explain why Venezuelans increasingly live someplace other than Venezuela.
That man-made conditions cause departures on a grand scale from Pakistan, Sudan, and Turkey prompts no wave of objections. Noting aloud the same cause-and-effect of policy upon people when it comes to, say, California somehow elicits scoffs and incredulity.
Certainly, a monolith of policy does not reign even among the monochromatic states. Florida differs from Texas differs North Carolina. But in a few major ways concerning taxes and regulation, the states gaining movers share key policies, and the states losing movers share key policies.
The top five on the U-Haul list fall under the rubric of right-to-work states. The bottom five states lack such protections for employees and employers.
Three of the five states gaining the most net movers lack an income tax. North Carolina levies a flat rate of 4.5 percent and the top rate of South Carolina’s graduated system reaches 6.5 percent.
California (14.4 percent), Massachusetts (9 percent), New Jersey (10.75 percent), New York (10.9 percent), and Pennsylvania (6.9 percent) all impose higher top rates, in certain instances dramatically higher top rates, than the two states at the top of U-Haul’s list that retain an income tax.
Tax policy does not amount to the alpha and omega of why people come and go. It does give us a general sense of the swath of rules and regulations of a given state. Does it provide a welcoming environment for business or does it provide a punitive environment for business? Limitations exist to this shorthand method of analysis. But it seems to generally follow that states that impose greater burdens in terms of taxes also put onerous burdens on citizens in other areas.
So, people decide to leave. And they leave places that boast such glaring advantages. The climate and natural beauty of California, the history and quality universities in Massachusetts, and the center-of-the-action feel offered by the financial mecca of New York, all work as reasons to stay. Yet, year after year, people leave.
And if state lawmakers do not change policy, then locals will continue to change their address.
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