Who Migrates?

Inflows are Less Educated and More Foreign

Hey! This chart is interactive! Click here so you can see the rest of the data!

Iowa has a lower rate of in-migration for degree-holders than the typical US state. This gap is large: the median US state has inflows over a third higher than Iowa. At the same time (as you can see if you click the interactive link), Iowa also attracts fewer non-degreed people, though the gap is smaller. So we can say that Iowa has lower inflows than the nation on the whole regardless of education category, but especially for degreed migrants.

We can also assess migration by foreign origin. I’m not talking about international migration here, just domestic migration of foreigners versus the native born. Iowa attracts much more in-migration of the foreign born than the typical state, but loses the native-born.

Finally, breaking the data down by income levels, Iowa has roughly typical inflows of both individuals earning under $25,000 and those earning over $75,000.

So overall, inflows are less educated and more foreign than the national average.

Who Migrates?

Outflows are More Educated and More Foreign

Another interactive graphic! Click it!

As the above graphic for out-migration shows, Iowa has higher outmigration of degreed people than is typical. Outmigration of the non-degreed is slightly lower than is typical for other states. Overall, we can say that Iowa’s outflows tend to be more educated.

For the foreign vs. native comparison, we see that Iowa has much higher out-migration of foreigners than the national average, but slightly lower native-born out-migration. Finally, based on income, Iowa has slightly higher out-migration for both categories.

For outflows, Iowa tends to be a disproportionate loser of degreed migrants, as well as foreign-born migrants.

Who Migrates?

Net Flows Show “Brain Drain”…

Or Do They?

When you take inflows and outflows together, you get net migration. Iowa’s net migration, based on just this data, looks like something out of an economic development authority’s nightmares. Let’s do some really terrible stereotyping here and think about what the above chart could mean.

Poor, uneducated foreigners are moving in and taking jobs, while Iowa’s higher-earning, educated native-born are fleeing the state! Oh no! Think of the tax revenues, think of the cultural change, think of the children! How can Iowa survive this terrible flight of “job-creators” and the “creative class”?

To understand migration, we can’t just look at any targeted set of data, but rather have to find the right set.

Who Migrates?

Migration Has a Life Cycle

Iowa’s apparent “brain drain” is in fact exactly the opposite. When we look at migration by age group, this becomes crystal clear. Iowa gains minors (who mostly move with parents: so we can see this as Iowa gaining families). Iowa gains 30-somethings, who are probably parents and early- or mid-career workers. Iowa loses folks later in their career or retiring.

But holy cow, Iowa gains a lot of 18–19 year olds! That’s a 5% net migration rate. That’s quite large. Now it’s true, Iowa loses 20-somethings, but the effects don’t offset. From 2008–2013, Iowa lost about 8,000 people in their 20s, but gained about 22,000 people aged 18 to 19.

With this in mind, let’s revisit the net data shown above. Who has a higher income: a college student, or a pensioner in their 60s? Well, the pensioner, of course. Even if the student works full time as a minimum wage worker, chances are they will still make under $25,000, while at least some retirees (and many late-career workers) will make over $75,000. So if college students move in and retirees move out, it will look like the poor replacing the rich: but it’s really just the upwardly mobile replacing the already accomplished.

The same is true for educational attainment. How many 18 to 19 year-old college students already have a degree? I think it’s safe to say very, very few! But how many people in their 50s and 60s have a college degree? Well, at least some; maybe as many as 30 or 40 percent in some cases. So if college students move in and retirees move out, it will look like the uneducated replacing the educated: but it’s really just the natural cycle of education and training.

Finally, even foreign vs. native born discrepancies can be accounted for. Millennials are far more likely to be foreign-born than individuals now in their 60s, and many foreigners come to the United States to study. This also explains why many foreigners leave Iowa: they disproportionately come on J-1 visas, so are likely to stay temporarily, or apply to graduate school, often in other states.

So is Iowa experiencing brain drain? Hardly. The balance of the evidence suggests that Iowa is actually experiencing brain gain. Sure, a lot of degreed people move out, but that’s a good sign! Why? First of all, most of these young migrants stick around. Again, if we assume all of the migrant flows from 18 to 29 years old are educationally driven (not true, but a thought-provoking hypothetical), then Iowa’s net gain in “skilled migrants” would be 14,000 college-educated people. Sounds pretty good to me.

Second, we have to ask what motivates education. People don’t just go to school for the kicks: they have goals, ambitions, and aspirations. Many of those goals include opportunities beyond Iowa, perhaps for a whole life, perhaps just a few years. Iowa’s negative flow of degreed people is a sign that Iowa universities do a good job attracting, training, and then sending students to lives of success. This “negative” migration is in fact a symptom of a relatively successful university system.

By having more people connected to Iowa around the nation, Iowa businesses, workers,and researchers can develop wider networks of social and economic support, providing them an additional safety net in hard times, greater economic and social mobility, and greater exposure to new ideas that lead to innovation. And as a new project gets underway to actively engage this “Iowan diaspora,” the state may begin to enjoy even larger benefits from out-migration.

Who Migrates?

Iowa’s Migration Varies by Age

It turns out, Iowa has a fairly strong record on “young adult” migration. Numerous Minnesotan and Illinois young people end up in Iowa for their college education, and many of them end up staying in Iowa. While other states like Colorado, Delaware, Vermont, North Dakota, or Rhode Island have an even more positive young adult migration record, Iowa does better than most of its neighbors and regional peers.

By the way: notice that California is not particularly attractive to young people. Yet another migration myth.

For individuals over 40, Iowa’s migration rate is somewhat negative. It’s not the worst in the region, faring considerable better than Illinois or Michigan, and it’s quite similar to Minnesota. But it does perform worse than Wisconsin, South Dakota, Nebraska, or Missouri in terms of hanging onto people at the peak of their career, as well as retirees.

So what can we say about Iowa’s place in the migration life cycle? It draws in people hoping to improve on their skills and knowledge. Many stay, but many are equipped to go elsewhere, and to so, presumably to their benefit. Iowa attracts people in their 30s as well. But by the time they’re getting middle aged or older, many Iowa residents begin looking for other states to call home.

Where, you might ask? Well, let’s look and see.

Where Do Migrants Go?

Do Iowans Leave for Sun and Taxes?

Let’s start with two simple stories about “where” migrants go: they head to warm, southerly climes, and they look for low taxes. Let’s start with the weather narrative.

The above map shows Iowa’s “replacement rate” with each of several regions. A number under 100 means Iowa loses people to the region, over 100 means it gains. As you can see, Iowa gains the most from the frigid New England states, and loses the must to the sunny southwest. Score 1 for the “weather hypothesis,” right?

Then we have this map, divided into three regions: states with no income tax, states with the highest income tax rates, and the other states. As you can see, Iowa has the most lopsided and positive flows with the high-tax states, and the most lopsided and negative flows with the low-tax states. Point for the “tax hypothesis”!

Where Do Migrants Go?

Iowa’s Migration Corridors

But when we look at Iowa’s migration flows for each individual state, these stories break apart pretty quickly. Iowa loses to Arizona and Texas, but gains from Nevada and New Mexico. There are gains from New York and Connecticut, sure, but losses to Maine. And it’s true that Iowa loses people to Florida and Georgia, but it gains from North Carolina and Mississippi. For every region, there are winners and losers.

The states with the largest net flows with Iowa are Illinois, Arizona, Missouri, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

The regional explanations may have been tempting, but they just don’t hold water. The tax explanation is only a little better. Sure, Iowa loses to Florida, Texas, Washington, South Dakota, and Tennessee. But it gains from New Hampshire, Nevada, Wyoming, and Alaska: so having no income tax is no solution. On the other end of the spectrum, Iowa does gain or break even with every high-tax state. So do taxes impact migration? Sure, but not the way you think. I’ve written before on this topic at some length, so I won’t dwell on the taxes-migration debate here.

The above chart showed which states had large net migration balances with Iowa as a percent of Iowa’s population. Another way we can look at the data is to assess the net migration as a percent of the other state’s population. The above map shows each state color coded by its net migration balance with Iowa as a percent of its population. This shows that, from Illinois’ or Arizona’s perspective, Iowa looks rather less important than those states appear to Iowa. Meanwhile, from the perspective of the Dakotas, the migration balance with Iowa is very important, even as, from Iowa’s perspective, those states aren’t as big a deal.

This map, instead of showing the size of net migration compared to population, simply divides Iowa’s inflows from a given state by its outflows to that state. This shows how “lopsided” or uneven its flows are. For the most part, Iowa’s flows with neighbors are fairly balanced: gross flows are fairly large both directions, and Iowa just happens to have the edge against some, and be edged out by others. But for long-range migration, flows are much more lopsided. Flows from North Dakota, Connecticut, West Virginia, Mississippi, or Nevada are pretty much one-way, while flows to Virginia or Arizona are, likewise, pretty much one-way. Few Arizonans move to Iowa.

Where Do Migrants Go?

Iowa’s Migration Regions

I’ve defined 8 regions within Iowa based on metro areas, transportation networks, commuter zones, local migration flows, and other factors, as a way to take a closer look at Iowa’s migration. The above map shows how I’ve divided the state, and is also color-coded to match an interactive graph I’ll link to further down.

Interstate migration in Iowa heavily favors the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City area: which is unsurprising, given that this region includes the University of Iowa. Since Iowan migration is dependent on educational migrants, the localities with major universities (including Des Moines and Ames as well) will tend to get interstate migrants. This is especially true for the University of Iowa, which has a large postgraduate program that recruits out-of-state. Davenport and Dubuque also receive many cross-border migrants from Illinois.

Meanwhile, the Greater Council Bluffs area loses the most interstate migrants. This trend is overwhelmingly focused on migration just across the border into Nebraska, mostly by individuals who are between 30 and 60. The region also suffers some out-migration to Missouri.

For the rest of the state, and especially the more rural areas, interstate migration is comparatively small in terms of its aggregated net effects.

Where Do Migrants Go?

Some Excessive Detail on Iowa’s Regions

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “My life would be so much better if I knew the exact migration rate between Northern Iowa and states with no income tax”? No? Well, sometimes I have those thoughts. So I built a way for you to have an answer, just in case, like me, you have an unhealthy interest in specific migrant flows.

If you click the link to the interactive version of this graph, you’ll notice that there’s a dropdown menu. It has lots of options for various states and regions. Basically, you select a region, and it spits out the net migration rate in 2013 (as a percent of the Iowa region’s population) for each Iowa region. This is a pretty cool tool. For example, we can ask whether or not Iowans are fleeing to Arizona generally, or just from specific places:

Answer: almost every Iowa region loses people to Arizona. This is not a phenomenon driven by just one or two cities, but a statewide issue.

Or we could ask which regions attract the most Illinois migrants, on balance:

Well done eastern Iowa.

But maybe we don’t care about specific states. Maybe we’re interested in the “Rust Belt.” Here you go (with Illinois excluded, but there’s an option to include Illinois as well):

Cedar Rapids, Sioux Falls, and Davenport all gain from the Rust Belt, while Des Moines actually loses out to the region.

Check it out. Feel free to pass it along to others. And if you find yourself thinking, “Boy, I’m not from Iowa, but it would be cool if I had this for my state,” please get in touch with me.

Where Do Migrants Go?

From Iowa to Iowa

While we’re talking about Iowa regions, it makes sense to at least glance at migration within Iowa.

For in-state migration, the dominant trend is migrants from rural southern and northern Iowa moving to Des Moines. Some come for jobs, some for suburban living, and many for education, especially at Iowa State University.