Families are moving out of ‘blue’ states and heading for red and purple, researchers find

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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.