In last month’s publication of Freedom in the 50 States, Will Ruger and Jason Sorens point to net domestic migration as an indicator that Americans demonstrate their preferences for more libertarian states by where they choose to live. They explain, ”

In each case, the bivariate relationship between freedom and migration is positive. However, it is strongest for fiscal freedom and weakest for personal freedom.”

The authors go on to use regression analysis to control for some of the other variables that likely cause people to move from one state to another:

We also try a regression specification including state cost of living from 2000, as estimated by political scientists William D. Berry, Richard C. Fording and Russell L. Hanson.7 This is an index variable linked to a value of 10 for the national average in 2007, the last date for which a value is available. There is some concern that this variable is endogenous to freedom. For instance, it correlates with the Wharton land-use regulation variable at r = 0.67, implying that strict land-use regulation drives up the cost of living. It also correlates with fiscal freedom at −0.35, perhaps implying that taxation can also drive up cost of living. Finally, we also try including growth in personal income from 2000 to 2007 from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, adjusted for change in state cost of living from Berry, Fording, and Hanson. This variable is even more clearly endogenous to economic freedom, as well as to migration (more workers means more personal income). Nevertheless, we want to put the hypothesis that freedom attracts people to the strictest reasonable tests.

With this more in-depth analysis, the authors find that the three types of freedom they study — fiscal, regulatory, and personal — are all positively associated with net migration (PDF p. 97). In particular, the relationship between land use regulation and migration strikes me as an interesting one. States with the strictest land use regulations prevent in-migration by disallowing new housing development. According to Census data, New York City grew by about 2-percent between 2000 to 2010, including natural growth and foreign immigration. This is a significant slowdown from the 1990s. While the Big Apple wouldn’t be expected to attract new residents through libertarian policies, it does offer many economic and cultural opportunities that people might value. Ed Glaeser explains that by preventing new development, city- and state-level restrictions have prevented more people from being able to move to New York City:

The high prices that persist in New York City suggest that the demand for city living isn’t falling. Case-Shiller data, which captures the metropolitan area rather than the city, shows that the New York area’s prices have risen by 67 percent since 2000 (32 percent in real terms), more than any metropolitan area in the sample except Los Angeles. But the combination of economic strength and high prices need not lead to population growth if an area doesn’t build many more units. In that case, high housing demand leads only to higher prices — not more people. […] The Bloomberg administration has worked hard to allow more building, but the recent Census numbers seem to suggest that a combination of slow growth and continuing high prices implies that New York’s barriers to building, such as a complex zoning code and ever more Historic Preservation Districts, are still shutting out families that would like to move to the city.

This is just one city-level example, but New York City demonstrates that locations with the strictest land use regulations are not just discouraging in-migration with policies that limit residents’ freedom, they are also preventing people from moving to their jurisdictions by restricting growth in housing stock.