What's Causing Blue State Out Migration?

The Upshot has an interesting story about the fairly significant out migration from blue states to red states. Here's, well, the upshot:

Over the last few decades, residents of many traditionally liberal states have moved to states that were once more conservative. And this pattern has played an important role in helping the Democratic Party win the last two presidential elections and four of the last six. The growth of the Latino population and the social liberalism of the millennial generation may receive more attention, but the growing diaspora of blue-state America matters as well. 

The migration helped President Obama win Colorado, Florida and Virginia in both 2008 and 2012. In 2014, the influx of blue-state natives gives Democrats a better chance to win Senate races in Colorado, Georgia and North Carolina, among other places. 

The spread of people born in New York State offers a particularly telling example: Of the 20 million Americans alive today who were born in New York, nearly one in six now live in the South. That would have been almost unthinkable 50 years ago, when the share was one in 25.

So what is the presumptive cause of this out migration? Is it the result of public policies pursued by blue states? Matthew Yglesias over at Vox posits a theory in a post entitled "The Biggest Thing That Blue States Are Screwing Up." 

Conservatives, of course, tend to think they know the answer — Americans are fleeing the high taxes and malgovernment of blue America. The city of Detroit often comes up in this context, and it is certainly true that malgovernment (among other things) has made that city and several others into an increasingly undesirable place to live. 

On the other hand, if Detroit were the typical blue American city then houses in the Mission and Park Slope would be cheaper than houses in the suburbs of Atlanta and Dallas. The truth is that while there are pockets of economic pain all around the country, in general Blue America seems like a pretty nice place where wages, incomes, health outcomes, and education levels are generally higher.

So why does everyone leave? Well precisely because houses in Blue America generally aren't cheap like Detroit. They're more often expensive like San Francisco. As Dylan Matthews wrote last week, coastal states are generally more expensive.

Note that Yglesias' analysis focuses almost exclusively on coastal states. He mentions Detroit as an outlier with its own unique set of problems that have actually driven the cost of housing down. 

Where would Illinois fit within the premise that blue state out migration is caused by an absence of affordable housing? It's been widely reported that Illinois has seen a notable increase in the number of people leaving the state:

Illinois has experienced what is called out-migration for years, but Thursday's data, released by the U.S. Census Bureau, appears to portray a state that is picking up where it left off before the economic downturn, according to a person who has studied Midwest population trends. 

Illinois' net loss of 39,562 people between July 1, 2012, and July 1, 2013, far exceeded the next nearest state, Michigan. It saw a net loss of just more than 11,000 people during the same period.

Could the lack of low-cost housing be contributing to the outflow of residents? Generally speaking, the answer appears to be no. The median value of an owner-occupied home in Illinois is actually less than the national average by about $20 thousand. The median cost of renting is also slightly below the national average. 

Data provided by AreaVibes, Inc.

Of course, these data points don't hold true for Chicago. Both the cost of owner-occupied housing and rentals exceed the national average. Housing costs could be a factor in the out migration trends for Cook County, which are running well ahead of the highly populated collar counties. 

Forbes has a terrific interactive map that allows for a county-by-county analysis of out migration and where departing Illinoisans are heading. The map shows that some collar counties have experienced a growth (or have at least broken even) in population in recent years at the same time that Cook County is losing residents. Out migration from Cook to the collar counties likely plays a role in this growth. But certainly higher than average housing costs might be a cause of out migration from Cook County, particularly with respect to Chicago residents.

The out migration that bedevils Illinois likely has multiple causes. Housing costs in Cook County might be one of them, but factors like high property tax rates, political dysfunction, and the general sense that Illinois isn't hospitable to business growth likely play a role as well.