A pair of reports underscores the ongoing impact on Connecticut of residents migrating to other states ”“ and at least in one case, the reverse.
Some 45 percent of Connecticut residents have considered moving out of the state due to high taxes, according to a recent poll by the Yankee Institute for Public Policy, a Hartford-based think-tank that often stumps for lower taxes.
Between 2000 and 2006, residents relocating to other states took nearly $2.7 billion in income with them, the Yankee Institute determined.
“It”™s hard to measure the cost of people living farther from family and friends in communities they used to live in, or the long-term loss to the state of children who might have started a business in Connecticut one day if their family hadn”™t moved away when they were kids,” wrote Fergus Cullen, a New Hampshire transplant himself who is executive director of the Yankee Institute, in a commentary posted on the organization”™s web site.
The topic of state migratory patterns is a topic of ceaseless fascination among demographics researchers, and not all studies have been damning. In 2008, the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center determined Connecticut was among the top half of “magnet” states nationally as calculated by the percentage of residents 18 and older born elsewhere (40 percent). And Connecticut barely missed cracking the top half of “sticky” states as defined by the Pew Center, residents who were born in Connecticut and who have remained here as adults.
New York residents who moved to Connecticut between 2000 and 2008 brought $2.8 billion in income with them, however, according to a separate study by the Empire Center for New York State Policy.
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Connecticut ranked 43rd nationally for its out-migration this decade, according to the Empire Center, which ranked its home state dead last.
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On a net basis, more than 51,000 New Yorkers moved to Connecticut between 2000 and 2008, compared with 167,000 choosing New Jersey. For those fleeing both states, Florida was the top draw.
Empire Center researchers stated cold weather cannot be held entirely to blame, noting that New Hampshire registered a gain during the same period. But both studies highlighted Florida”™s sunny climes and tax environment as key draws for those in the Northeast.
In a separate 2008 study published by the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, taxes and climate were the biggest factors in individuals moving to Florida and North Carolina, another popular draw for Connecticut residents. (The luster may be off the orange as 2010 approaches: Florida recently announced it was losing population, with the exodus fueled by a real estate bust.)
The Yankee Institute did not analyze migration figures at the county level in Connecticut, but the Empire Center did. Its study found that expensive Westchester County, which has a similar demographic profile to Fairfield County, suffered a relatively mild exodus compared with other metro-area New York City counties, losing more than 25,000 residents so far this decade for a 2.7 percent attrition rate.
Neighboring Putnam County across the Danbury border fared even better, seeing fewer than 1,000 residents decamp elsewhere on a net basis. New York”™s mecca was Orange County across the Hudson River, whose 5 percent growth barely bested Saratoga County.
