Author: Jeff Rosenthal
Migration plays a very important role not only in world-wide demographics, but also in our country's history. From westward expansion in the 19th Century to migration from rural to urban areas and the Great Migration of the 20th Century, we are often considered a country on the move. This movement has slowed down over the past thirty years, and researchers have tried to determine reasons for this. This blog article will briefly share migration information for North Carolina and then sum up recent research on interstate migration.
We know the following about North Carolina Migration:
- North Carolina is generally a 'sticky' state with a high percentage of adults who were born in the state still living here. This can play into people returning to North Carolina to retire.
- We can be considered a migrant magnet where certain areas of the state attract residents born outside of NC. These regions include economic hubs like Charlotte and the Triangle, areas around military bases like Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune, and retiree destinations like Brunswick County.
- We continue to have higher net total and domestic migration to our state than other states. U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates of Residential Population Change from both 2010-2016 and 2015-2016 show that we rank in the top 5 of states in both total and domestic net migration.
- From 2010-2016, only Texas, Florida, and Colorado have higher domestic net migration.
- From 2015-2016, only Florida, Texas, Washington, and Arizona have higher domestic net migration.
- We have declining net migration in North Carolina since the 1990s. The population estimates from the 1990s through the projections to 2020 indicate that net migration decreased. Net migration accounts for roughly 3/5s of the population growth in North Carolina. It accounted for approximately 64% of total population growth in 2015, and has ranged between 59-67% since 2000. (Source: North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management)
Interstate migration is generally defined as moves across state borders, but within the United States over a distance that would typically require migrants to change local labor markets, housing markets, or both. Researchers have used a wide variety of national data sources to explore the nature of this migration, such as the Current Population Survey's (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the decennial U.S. Census, American Community Survey, IRS tax files, and other, smaller panel surveys like the Survey of Income and Program Participation. While these data sources sometimes show differing rates, the consensus story is that people are less likely to move these days than they were before 1990. This percentage has moved to around 3% per year before 1990 to ranges of 1.4-2.8% since 2000 (Source: CPS).
Different researchers have different hypotheses for why this may be the case. These include:
Demographic Changes
- Our population is aging, and older people generally don't move as much as younger people. Also, the share of 20-34 year olds fell considerably from the 1980s to the 2000s, and this age cohort represents the people that are most likely to move.
- Increased share of older workers may cause firms to recruit locally.
- Rise of dual earner households, which may make it harder to move long distances because of increased difficulty searching for two jobs instead of just one.
Economic Changes
- The Great Recession put mortgages underwater so people would be less likely to move.
- Millennials were more likely to live at home during the Great Recession.
- Changes in the distribution of employment across different types of occupations such as the declining differences of occupational returns across labor markets.
- Increasing job-lock associated with rising health care costs. People are less likely to move because they fear losing benefits as a result of a job change.
- Increasing occupational licensing such that moving to different states would require expensive re-licensing.
- The internet has allowed people to go on-line and easily conduct location and job searches remotely. According to Kaplan & Schulhofer-Wohl (2017), workers used to move to locations to see what life is like in their new destinations, but a fair share would return back to their original destination, thus engaging in 'repeat migration'. With easy access to more information, potential movers may not move in the first place, thus lowering the migration rates.
- The decline in labor market transitions (declines in layoffs and quits, changing industries and occupations) leads to fewer moves.
The research does not appear to have one solitary factor that explains the decline. Even the key research by Molloy et al. (2017) finds that while there are minimal effects from population aging, the decline in labor market transitions only explains about 0.5 percentage point of the 1.1 percentage point decline. North Carolina has seen a decline in labor market dynamism (declines in layoffs and quits, and declines in changing industries and occupations). The LEAD Feed has also reported on this decline across the state's metro areas.
While North Carolina continues to have higher net migration than most states, the factors that impact the U.S. like declining labor market dynamism will continue to impact North Carolina into the future. Declining interstate migration in general would go hand-in-hand with lower amounts of migrants to North Carolina, even if we continue to attract more migrants than other states. Likewise, we may also continue to do better than other states because we have lower levels of out-migration. Housing affordability and higher income are associated with lower out-migration while unemployment claims are associated with greater out-migration, with housing affordability continuing its importance in more recent times (Sasser 2010).
The degree to which North Carolina can do the following could help determine how interstate migration will continue to play an important role in our state's growth and economy:
- Gain labor market dynamism
- Retain affordable housing, higher income, and lower unemployment
- Continue to attract students and retirees from outside the states
- Retain both students and veterans
Suggested readings:
Molloy, Raven, Christopher L. Smith, & Abigail Wozniak. 2017. "Job Changing and the Decline in Long-Distance Migration in the US." Demography 54(2): 631-653.
Kaplan, Greg & Sam Schulhofer-Wohl. 2017. "Understanding the Long-Run Decline in Interstate Migration." International Economic Review 58(1): 57-94.
Hyatt, Henry R., Erika McEntarfer, Ken Ueda, & Alexandria Zhang. 2016. "Interstate Migration and Employer-to-Employer Transitions in the US: New Evidence from Administrative Records Data." U.S. Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies Paper No. CES-WP-16-44.
Sasser, Alicia C. 2010. "Voting with their feet: Relative economic conditions and state migration patterns." Regional Science and Urban Economics 40: 122-135.
Carolina Demography's great blogs on migration.
Net Migration Statistics for North Carolina counties from the NC Office of State Budget and Management.
CPS Migration/Geographic Mobility Data Tables from the U.S. Census Bureau.