CNA Staff, Sep 16, 2024 / 17:45 pm (CNA).
A new analysis by researchers at the Institute for Family Studies examines the states that are attracting and losing families, and finds that families are leaving many of the most progressive U.S. states and heading for states that are considered more conservative or politically diverse.
Reliably blue states — i.e., states that voted for Democratic presidential candidates in both 2016 and 2020 — lost 213,000 families with children in 2021 and 2022, the researchers said.
Meanwhile, states that voted Republican in both elections gained 181,000 families. “Purple” states that flipped between the two parties in the last presidential elections, like Arizona and Georgia, also posted gains, attracting 38,000 families.
“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,” researchers Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox wrote.
The researchers opined that these data points suggest that despite many “blue” states implementing pro-family policies such as child tax credits and paid family leave, other negative factors in those states, such as high housing costs, are leading families to seek refuge in states that are generally considered more conservative and may not have yet implemented many government programs to help families.
“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.”
The researchers used the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to determine which states gained and lost the most families during 2021–2022.
In terms of the total number of families gained, Texas had by far the highest number, with a net gain of 53,000 families between 2021–2022. Florida gained 38,000, while Georgia gained 22,000, Arizona 16,000, South Carolina 15,000, and Tennessee 13,000.
Of those six states, only one — Arizona — is not currently fully controlled at the state level by Republicans. Arizona has a divided government with a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled House and Senate, while in all five of the other states, Republicans control the governor’s mansion as well as the Senate and House.
Looked at another way, the states with the most families moving there as a percentage of their population were Idaho at 2.3% followed by New Hampshire, Montana, South Carolina, and South Dakota. (Texas’ 53,000 family net gain only represented a 0.8% increase due to its already large population; Florida was similar at 0.9%.)
All of those states are currently Republican-controlled at the state level, though New Hampshire voted Democratic in the last presidential election.
In contrast, the states that have lost the most families are almost all — with a few exceptions — Democratic-controlled at the state level and voted Democratic in the last presidential election. At the top in terms of percentages, New York lost 71,000 families for a decline of 1.9%.
At 1.2%, the second-largest decline by percentage was Alaska, which has a Republican governor and a divided legislature — though in net terms, Alaska only lost 2,000 families.
Next on the list with an identical 1.2% loss was California, which is heavily Democratic-controlled and lost 92,000 families, the largest net loss of any state.
Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Hawaii — all reliably Democratic — were next on the list, with Louisiana placing ninth with a 0.5% decline. Louisiana is even more heavily Republican-governed than Alaska and has enacted strong pro-life protections in recent years. The state has, however, historically struggled with high poverty, crime, and fallout from natural disasters.
The authors of the analysis noted that because of the timing of the data available, much of the migration was likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, when families may have fled cities for more rural areas. Later on, many of the states they moved to in the Sunbelt and Mountain West reopened for in-person instruction sooner than states on the West Coast and the Northeast. Economically, many of those states, such as Texas and Florida, also offered the lure of lower taxes and strong job growth.
The authors opined that the migration data suggest government policies designed to help families are not the most important factor when families decide where they want to live.
“[Y]es, many of these policies are desirable to families, and some help them. But they’re not enough to offset the cavalcade of other problems, many of them government-created, that often bedevil blue states, from homelessness to high housing costs, that make them less attractive to families with children,” the researchers said.
“No amount of tax credits will ever be more valuable to a family than safe streets and decent housing for middle-class earners … Parental leave will never outweigh a good job market.”
In addition, they wrote, “red states have generally resisted letting their schools and sports be guided by avant-garde gender theories.”
“[T]o be frank, most parents object to policies that force their daughters to face biological males on the playing field or in the locker room,” the authors wrote.
Despite being a draw for families, many Republican-led states lag behind in terms of educational quality and health care outcomes. In some states like Mississippi with high poverty rates, however, efforts are underway to expand social safety nets in service of families.
Families mainly in red or purple states, like North Carolina, Arizona, and Indiana, have also benefited from expanded school choice programs in recent years, which allow parents greater freedom to send their child to the school of their choosing.
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There should be a concerted effort on the part of Red State governments to institute policies that attract Red-State types away from Blue State insanity. To begin with, Red States ought to be shipping all illegal aliens to: the Hamptons, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket Island, the rolling hills of Vermont, coastal Maine towns, the Jersey Shore and Beacon Hill.
It’s funny you mentioned Nantucket. A family member does home remodeling & they were contacted several years ago by a couple from Nantucket Island who were relocating to CA because Nantucket had too many illegal aliens. Seriously.
CA was a strange choice maybe but there actually is a population of migrant workers on Nantucket because someone needs to mow the grass & clean houses. And they can’t be expected to use the ferry every day. If affluent folks would do their own yardwork & pick up after themselves-problem solved.
Coincidentally I just saw an article about someone here illegally being arrested on Nantucket.
John, I thought there were only RED, WHITE and BLUE states! I agree that our border needs swift attention. More border police, more tactical technology, more asylum judges.
You say “Red States ought to be shipping all illegal aliens…”.
National Immigration Forum: Since April 2022, the governors of Texas, Arizona, and Florida have used taxpayer funds to transport over 10,000 recently arrived migrants from the Southwest border to other states. Governors Greg Abbott (R-Texas) and Doug Ducey (R-Arizona) have sent thousands of migrants to Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago.
Not only did we pay the bill, the illegals were not told where they were going. Did they target “sanctuary cities”? Did they ever consider a humanitarian approach? Was their presence “poisioning the blood” of our people?
The devicive rhetoric must end. We need new leadership
I moved out of Illinois to Missouri after my husband of 41 years died of COVID. I’m glad I did, although I still love the Land of Lincoln and miss the good things about Illinois. But I’m close enough to visit often! One of the reasons the “blue” states enact “liberal” policies at the State level is that these states are often dominated by a large city. E.g., in Illinois, although much of the state is farmland and small towns and small cities (many of which have lost much of their industries which means less jobs and a lower-income population), the policies that pass in Springfield heavily favor liberal Chicago (the city, not necessarily the suburbs), which has a population that is greater than all the small towns and cities combined. I think this might be true in other “liberal-leaning” states–a large, liberal population in the metropolitan area dominates the politics in the entire state–and the votes in the small towns and cities can’t possibly defeat their larger city in the voting booth. Many Illinoisians also believe that Chicago is still controlled to a great extent by descendants of the Capone and O’Banion mobs–I have to admit, I’m one of those people! NPR did an undercover study of Chicago street gangs and learned that many of these gangs are under the control of the mobs (that’s where they get the drugs that they sell). I don’t think we should be too quick to scoff at this idea.
Mrs. Sharon Whitlock: But didn’t Sinatra tell us that “Chicago is my kind of town?”
Our state’s as Red as Red can be but we’re still losing population due to poverty & lack of well paying jobs. We have gained a few “political refugees” from California though.
Simple solution: Give industries that pay well and move into the State, tax incentives- like pay no corporate taxes for 10 years. It would be more than compensated by the taxes paid by those whom they employed who might otherwise be out of work or looking to live elsewhere.
We do have some well paying natural resource industry jobs but the fed govt. keeps restricting/shutting those down.
But yes, we need to be more creative.
Deacon Ed stealing from the hard working employees to incentivize the greedy corporations is a despicable suggestion. I can’t even believe you consider yourself a Catholic making such a horrid suggestion. Corporations and big businesses do not need 10 year tax breaks. They need to pay their fair share in taxes.
Why do you hate the working class?
You are not a real man. You are a sad little lapdog for the billionaire class. GTFO