Local factors can help explain migration in the Bluegrass. I’ll start with Lexington-specific factors (like the extensive college network I’ve already outline), then move outside of Lexington.

College Enrollments Can Account for 1/5 of All In-Migrants

The University of Kentucky’s 2013 freshman class had 4,650 students. Of those, 31% were from out-of-state. That’s 1,441 migrants right there. If we assume that all the schools I listed earlier had 25% of their enrollment from out-of-state, then we can account for roughly 3,500 migrants per year. For a region that attracts roughly 19,200 migrants generally, that means students account for about 18% of all interstate migration.

Without actual admissions data from UK, I can’t estimate how much inter-regional migration is due to students, but it’s likely to be similar in scale. If another 3,500 students migrated from around Kentucky to Bluegrass schools, that would be about 20% of all in-state migrants.

In other words, yes, education really is that big a deal. Education likely also motivates out-migration by graduates, so the net effect of universities is more ambiguous. Unless, of course, the local area also offers appealing living conditions and a good job.

Hub-and-Spokes Cities Facilitate High Quality of Life

Earlier, I mentioned Lexington’s distinctive hub-and-spoke system of outlying cities. Between Lexington and those cities is some suburbia, but also lots of farms and economically active countryside. This picturesque “working greenbelt,” combined with commutes under 30 minutes to downtown Lexington, makes it possible to work downtown while living in the gorgeous green hills of central Kentucky. Whether it’s downtown urban living, big horse farms, low-density mansion-neighborhoods, suburbia, or small-town living, the Lexington region has it all. This means that the region won’t lose many migrants to other regions simply because they want a different style of living: for any lifestyle except transit-dependent high-density urban life, the Bluegrass has it.

This geographic diversity also creates employment diversity, including jobs in education (such as at the many nearby universities), agriculture, services of various kinds, manufacturing (like the Toyota plant in Georgetown), and other jobs.

Livestock Agriculture (and Rising Prices) Have Strengthened Outlying Counties

Value of Animal and Livestock Products as a Percent of Total Agriculture Products Sold by County. USDA Census Source.

The data in the map at left comes from the USDA’s Census of Agriculture. It shows an important fact about central Kentucky: agriculture is mostly about animals, not crops. This map shows just livestock and poultry for sale, generally as food products. Rising demand from the developing world especially has boosted farm incomes for livestock producers, reducing out-migration by rural individuals, as farming can make real money in central Kentucky.

Horse Farms are Huge in the Bluegrass

Inventory of Horses and Ponies, One Dot Equals 500 Head of Horses. USDA Census Source.

Outsiders often know about Kentucky from the Kentucky Derby, and so the state has a reputation for having horses. Thus far, I haven’t talked about horses much, despite already covering Louisville, where the Kentucky Derby is held. However, the Bluegrass is where horses are really big. Much of Kentucky has some amount of horse-raising, but, around Lexington, it’s huge. This business employs trainers, tour guides, farmers, investors, and many others. It’s a business that often requires substantial skills and education, from specialized horse-surgeons to terriers, feedstock farmers, and race-track workers, it’s an atypical “agricultural” sector, and one that draws people from far away to be a part of it. Robust heritage industries (like the horse business, or the bourbon industry in the same area) that can’t easily be drawn away by competition in other regions facilitate economic development by creating spinoff industries, such as tourism, gaming, accommodations and restaurants, and other benefits.

The Bourbon Boom: How Sector-Specific Demand Can Boost Migration

One of Kentucky’s most widely-known products is, as mentioned above, bourbon. Bourbon barrels are aged almost exclusively in Kentucky, and are so numerous that the state actually has more barrels of bourbon than people. In pure caloric terms, the population of Kentucky could survive off of stored bourbon and nothing else for about 100 days. It’s a huge business. It’s also a geographically concentrated business. The map shown has a pin for every active distillery (there are a few in other parts of Kentucky, but this is the great majority). As can be seen, they’re distributed in an arc from Louisville, to the Western Pennyroyal, then back up into the Bluegrass.

A 2014 impact study commissioned by the bourbon industry found that distillery-related employment rose from about 1.2% of all KY employment to over 1.5%, while the bourbon industry’s share of wages rose from a low point in 1999 of about 1.4% of all wages, to about 2.7% in 2013. This boom is largely driven by rising demand for bourbon and other brown liquors around the nation.

When a product specific to a certain region has such a rise in demand, it boosts the income of producers. That in turn boosts their local consumption, allows expansions of payrolls, and creates second-order economic benefits for a region. It’s no surprise, then, that bourbon-country saw strong migration: the area is creating jobs in a high-demand industry, and boosting income and consumption in the local area.