If you live in a community that offers you poor economic opportunities while taxing you to the teeth, why wouldn’t you leave if you had the means to do so?
The Chicago Tribune reports:
Goodbye, Illinois: residents are leaving for other states
Even on days when the temperature is above zero, Illinois struggles to keep people here. They’re leaving, in droves, for states with sunnier economic opportunities.
New census data and other figures reveal the cold hard truth: More people are moving away than coming, tipping Illinois last year into the dreadful category of states with declining populations. From July 2013 to July 2014, Illinois shrank by about 10,000 residents in all, joining other states in decline such as West Virginia, Connecticut and Alaska.
When demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution analyzed the annual Census Bureau estimates, two facts jumped out at him. First, Florida overtook New York to become the third-most-populous state (after California and Texas). And second, Illinois is badly leaking people.
“The faucet is starting to turn up in terms of moving to the Sun Belt,” Frey tells us. “Obviously states in the Northeast and Midwest, like Illinois, are going to be part of that surge.” But still: “I was quite surprised by the Illinois out-migration and that there is negative growth.”
Funny how Texas never seems to have this problem, huh?
(Image:Source)
