The Migratory Patterns of Americans are Changing

The American Enterprise Institute looks closely at how migration patterns have changed state-by-state through the last couple of years of recession.

1 minute read

February 23, 2010, 6:00 AM PST

By Tim Halbur


States are categorized according to the growth or decline of their population. Texas is, they find, "arguably the nation's most sustained and serious economic success story." Another sector they trumpet is a handful of states they call "Flyover Favorables":

"One of the unsung success stories of this decade has been the relatively robust growth of states in the Great Plains and northern Rocky Mountains states, which has not flagged significantly even in the 2007 to 2009 recession. For years, many of these states suffered from the steady outmigration of young people and the aging of their populations, and those trends continue in rural counties. But in this decade, both large metro areas like Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul and small metro areas like Sioux Falls and Fargo have had steady and healthy growth-with no housing bubbles bursting, relatively low tax levels, low or medium rates of immigration, significant domestic inflow (yes, even in the Dakotas in 2008 to 2009)-or, as compared to recent decades, vastly reduced levels of domestic outflow."

Monday, February 22, 2010 in The American Enterprise Institute

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