Article about how Florida's population statistics demonstrate revealed preferences that go against the media blob narrative. Ok, cool.
The comments: "i haaaaaate florida so much it's the worst place ever, and here's why that reflects well upon ME and why I am so obviously superior in intellect and culture to those stinky people who live there." like congrats, i guess.
and yet here you are trying to prove your own superiority to yourself. pure cope. you can try to call me stupid. but at the end of the day i'm the one who can go walk outside to a pool right now. it's a high of 86 today. be well, sharty.
extremely disingenuous reading of the comments but since we're arguing about arguing, i guess it would make sense to play dumb to call someone else dumb. all the same, stupid is as stupid does. so, i hope you enjoyed spending time on this, you insecure and allegedly stupid individual.
Absolutely fascinating and fair article by Nate Silver who works strenuously here to avoid the TDS affliction and weak research methodology of his partisan lefty journalism peers.
The note about California/New York out-migration is a Twainian use of statistics. Sure the averages are "average" or "low" but when the gross numbers are looked at... it becomes more clear. Lots of people are fleeing California and NY...
If you’re using out-migration numbers as a proxy for “how much do residents of this state like it there,” which is what this article is broadly about, then the average is the relevant statistic - I don’t view that as misleading.
Of course not, but how does that make the top-line numbers misleading? It is simply true that CA residents were less likely to leave CA than WY residents were to leave WY, for example.
In times of high interest rates, relocating from one's primary domicile is extremely cost prohibitive. Many people who might want to move, find that it is impossible to sell their home and/or finance a new one elsewhere. That NY and CA have among the most restrictive NIMBY laws doesn't help either.
What is happening in these two states is that those who are leaving are the ones who not only want to do so - but can afford to do so. There are probably thousands more with the same instinct, but lacking the financial wherewithal.
Were the data complete, and showing that out-migration is relatively constant among all socioeconomic groups, that would be one thing. But we never get the devil in the details, just the "top line" number.
Assuming that an "average" or "median" tells the "truth" is using statistics the way a drunk uses a lamppost - for support rather than illumination. Like this tweet: https://twitter.com/NHL/status/1774975711549198742
The achievement may be worthy - but it doesn't at all tell the story. One of the two players produced points at a 53% rate better than the other. Which one? The stat used doesn't say.
No, this is nonsense. First of all, it is still very much a seller’s market in CA - homes sell fast and for high prices. CA’s NIMBYism doesn’t make it harder to leave.
Your theory is that, although a higher fraction of people left WY than CA, a higher fraction of people would leave CA *if they could*. But the average income is *higher* in CA than WY, so it should be *easier* for the typical Californian to move somewhere with low cost of living than for the typical Wyomingite to move somewhere that likely has a *higher* cost of living.
Even if your theory were accurate, it still doesn't match your claim of "percentages are misleading - the top-level numbers are meaningful." Note that Florida has the fourth-highest raw domestic out-migration of any state, simply because its rate of out-migration is only moderately lower than average and it's the third-largest state.
California's NIMBY makes it impossible for middle class people to afford to live there and/or transition from renter to owner. These people are the types to leave.
The idea that the reasons people leave WY and CA are the same is ludicrous.
It would be interesting to see data about who is leaving which states.
CA has many low income/homeless because they are dependent on the government handouts and the weather. Plus the "undocumented" who have been living in CA for a long time are probably loathe to move to places where they won't be in "sanctuary."
WY loses people because of weather more than CA, but also probably economic opportunity, because the state government doesn't redistribute funds from the "rich" to the "poor" as much as others.
The reason the aggregate average and median data is all bullshit is that it doesn't speak to the reasons why people are leaving, and how the personal economics affects the decision making.
Just saying x% left CA and y% left WY doesn't explain what is going on in this country. There is a big sort going on - and those who find certain government policies intolerable are getting the fuck out of dodge. And there are many more who would love to do so - but can't find a way to do it.
That’s been true as long as they have been large states. lots of people die every year in NY and California. It doesn’t mean that they are particularly deadly
Yeah but that's the point of using a per-capita figure. If you're going to graph absolute numbers, then at any given time it's more or less just going to be a chart of biggest states to smallest states, and California would place singificantly higher in a ranking of "in-migration" by absolute numbers, despite being bottom of the list be relative numbers.
Yes, but the per capita only tells part of the story. You need the nominal, absolute number to see the scale. For example, since Covid, more than 650,000 people have relocated to Florida.
Sure, but that's really more just telling you about the scale of Florida itself as a large state. According to the data above, 780k people moved into California (2% of the population between foreign and domestic migration in a state of 39m) in 2022 alone. That would be a staggering number in most states (literally more than doubling the population if it happened in some), but the reality is that for California, even as a state with below-average outward migration in the same period, it's low enough that it's causing population stagnation.
Bigger states are just inevitably going to have more movement of people in either direction as a baseline (all else being equal they're going to have more absolute numbers of jobs, available houses, cities to choose from etc.), and Florida has been the 3rd biggest state for many years already. If I was going to add some useful data to the chart provided, it would probably be to show a percentage of net growth (or reduction) in poulation for each state, rather than doing the same data with absolute numbers in place of percentages.
Actually, the only problem with Silver's use of these stats is that he didn't go to the logical conclusion and calculate the net domestic migration for each state. When you do that (see my post way down below), you find that Florida is #4 on the list, whereas Cali is #50 and NY is #46. Therefore, even these numbers are pretty telling.
Florida is one of the last truly wild places in the US—and I’m not talking about the people. The wildlife here is abundant and...frisky. It’s not like rain forests or mountain regions where wildlife prefers to be hidden. Giant birds, reptiles, deer, and aquatic life like dolphin and manatee, all seem to want to say hello.
We have beaches, coasts, springs, rivers, lakes, forests, swamps and some of the most important wetland habitat in the world for migrating birds. Florida is paradise if you love the outdoors, which is doubly good if you prefer to avoid crowds of people.
If you love Florida like Floridians do, help us keep developers from destroying what’s left 💕
"If you love Florida like Floridians do, help us keep developers from destroying what’s left"
I think that perspective is part of why California is so expensive. NIMBY's have made it difficult for developers to build more houses (destroying what's left).
Most people who leave California do so because housing has gotten so expensive. Your plan would make Florida the same.
This. Development is why Florida is popular, it’s meeting demand with multi family housing, that is a nightmare squeezing lower incomes in places like CA.
You can want to protect the mangroves and be nothing like the grift of California governance all at the same time.
Are you kidding? We have a massive housing crunch. And while there is tons of multi-unit development, it is almost entirely at the very highest end of the market (I do mean highest —over $1m per unit). There are literally no incentives for building affordable housing since the State has outlawed local governments implementing any such protocols. Being less awful than California does not mean we have done anything to address housing. We haven’t. Most people who move here from other states are middle aged and older, and have the ability to buy single family homes in suburban areas and deed-restricted subdivisions. Meanwhile, young people, new college graduates, high school graduates—and all the millions of Floridians who work in our bloated service industry, can’t find anywhere to live.
I was not saying Florida was doing perfectly, but it is doing more than elsewhere despite DeSantis taking a NIMBY view of things recently to my dismay.
Still, where I live there are multiple multi-family apartments going up as well as even some townhomes (which I would like to see far more of, across the USA)
All new construction puts downward pressure on existing units and prices, so however bad it is or still getting in ways, it would be worse without it.
"Affordable housing" (aka long term subsidized units) is generally scam economics, the only solution is build build build. And yes, those $1M units still help although I would like to see zoning get resolved so less areas are either highrises or single families (see previous comment on wanting more townhomes)
yes, this. and the other thing that’s rotten is that local govts don’t charge “impact fees” for these developments so the taxpayer winds up with the burden of financing the infrastructure that feeds their profit and takes away our ecosystems.
Sharks too! Some aggressive species love spots along the East Coast. Also Man-O-War jellyfish. Super bad.
We just went out to Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge last weekend to see the gators. It’s an amazing place b/c you’ve got NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building in view the whole time while viewing dinosaurs, basically, just a dozen feet away. Jarring and wonderful at the same time. It funny--we mostly bump into Europeans out there.
Yep. Florida leads the country in random gator spottings, sharks are out there and anyone who's been to Florida several times has probably been stung by jelly fish, which isn't pleasant. Then you've got red tide, swarms of stink bugs and skeeters, sunburn if you don't double up on sunscreen and traffic is terrible in all the popular beach destinations. At Spring Break and the first weeks of college breaks, you're invaded by an army of 18 to 23-year-olds that's going to be drunk 12 hours a day.
Still, every time I've been I've had a great time. I could look at the ocean (I prefer the Gulf of Mexico) and the sunsets all day.
I live in Troy, Alabama - 2 1/2 hours from the popular beaches of the Panhandle. Travellers heading down Highway 231 going to and from Florida helps keep our economy afloat.
Alabama is perceived as a very poor state, which, in one sense, it is. Still, it's amazing how many families I know who own or once-owned beach places. At one time, half of the homes on the beach in Panama City and the Destin area were owned by Alabamians. You can be there in no time.
It's good to know people who have beach homes (or condos)!
The good news is that you can eat them too, and they're delicious. Whenever I visit Florida, I make a point of finding restaurants that serve gator bites.
I find that most non-Floridians (I'm native born in miami), do not realize the extent of the amazing crystal rivers and springs in Florida inland. There are over 1000 fresh water springs in Florida, absolutely gorgeous, fun, tubing, snorkeling, caves, it's an amazing state.
Add in beaches, fishing, excellent college and pro sports, no state tax, a stones throw from Caribbean resorts...
we do trails and kayak all over FL and usually the real tourists we see are from Canada/Europe. there’ll be townies enjoying springs or fishing on rivers, but tourists are usually from far away.
As a center-left ideology, I find this article mostly correct. No denying it with the population surge along with the rest of the sunbelt and Texas. People move to where they enjoy living. If I had any legitimate gripes about florida it would be that Florida disproportionately receive subsidized disaster assistance and that retirees spend their social security money down there rather than back in their home states where they originally lived and worked. At the same time it's better that they spend money in Florida and not move to Mexico or another country.
>retirees spend their social security money down there rather than back in their home states where they originally lived and worked.
Worth noting that elder care and retirement life, like any industry, exhibits agglomeration effects. It's not just climate. Florida is legitimately better at providing the services that old people want than other places, because it has an enormous industry of people whose entire professional careers are about providing services to old people (an industry which is very helpfully overlapping with the related but distinct hospitality and tourism sector broadly, another sector that agglomerates in FL, especially central FL)
In effect, the rest of the country is engaging in a comparative advantage trade with Florida -- Florida provides elder care services, other states provide durable goods, food, etc.
That’s not entirely accurate. While Florida has the highest number of elderly residents, it has some pretty mediocre outcomes. It costs more to be old here. The average per person spending on hospitals, doctors, home care and extended stay are all more greater than the national average. At the same time, hospitalized people who recuperate in nursing homes end up readmitted to the hospital more frequently. And assistive care providers (including home health aids, nurses and CNAs) are all paid less here (likely affecting both care quality and staffing).
LOL, I live in a MAGA county, if anything calling it hate is an understatement. There is nothing about Trump or Trump rallies that’s just “disagreeing with” Dems on.
The funny thing is MAGAs can never, ever under any circumstance admit we are right about anything.
You hit the nail on the head in that we think you are right on very little. We have profound differences in policy. Republicans don't hate Dems for it; we don't want your policies. Dems on the other hand have a tendency to throw terms around like racist, fascist, 'put y'all back in chains', etc. as opposed to arguing the reasons why taxes should go up or etc.
My feelings about policy have changed little my entire life. Trump regardless of his personality, has more closely matched my desires policy by policy down the line, yet I have never been called a Nazi by people who I thought were friends until 2016...
I've considered moving to Florida for the following reasons:
1) I want to send my kids to private school/homeschool and Florida is going to hand me $8k/kid. I have three kids so that's 24k/year.
2) Florida has no income tax.
3) Cost of living, especially housing, is cheaper. There are a lot of exciting housing developments down there.
4) It's a red state with a good economy.
5) It's demographics are pretty good, and its Hispanic population seems to have broken right (Cubans are solid).
The weather, costs of moving, and giving up a low mortgage rates are the only things holding me back. If I could have moved before rates went up I would have.
California and Florida have the same Gini coefficient. New York is more unequal. This despite the fact that Florida has a lot of retirees with lower fixed incomes.
And of course being lower income is much more pleasant in Florida. You can afford things which are unattainable in blue states.
Florida is capable building houses, a great accomplishment blue states can't figure out.
I don't see how providing an environment retirees value enough to move across the country is "looting".
CA and NY achieved their wealth in an earlier era before monolithic blue rule. Since then they have been degrading, and people fleeing the states is just a sign of the decay.
Medicare and Medicaid fraud is something I'm very familiar with myself, and I've seen no evidence Florida is worse than anywhere else. There are a lot of old people there, so of course the scale is going to be big, but there is plenty of fraud all around the country.
"This isn't about a contest between red and blue states."
I thought that was the point of this substack essay. Deep blue places like CA and NY are seeing huge outmigration to places like TX and FL. For all the railing about Red America people in those places do, they are winning the revealed preference contests of where people choose to live.
Nate, good article, but if people were really worried about Climate Change they dang sure wouldn't be moving to Florida, and especially the coastal and beach communities in Florida.
The number of hurricanes that hit Florida in a given hurricane season haven't gone up and Panama City Beach and Destin are still not under water. It's hot and humid in the summer in Florida ... but, as someone who lives in south Alabama and who visits Florida often, trust me here - it's always been hot in the summer in Florida. Alabama too.
The winters might be a little milder than they were 50 years ago, but that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
The rate of sea level rise is 3.4mm per year or about 1 foot every 90 years. There is nothing to worry about for any person alive today, we'll all be dead before it's a problem for the lowest areas of Florida. But the land rises quickly as you move away from the shoreline. I'm at 25 feet ASL in Jacksonville. It'll be a couple of millennia before the sea rises to this point.
Have you ever noticed how many rich democrats love to buy oceanfront homes? They aren't worried either, no matter what comes out of their mouths.
And in Texas, the Republicans in their constant need for deregulation, have provoked some of the winter time catastrophes Texans experience. Deregulation in that market leads to more competition and also discourages the attempts at the winterization needed to prevent Texans being cold during storms and winter, so in the name of short term greed the Republicans in Texas are guilty of a failure to plan. I guess that’s OK if you’re a rich Texan, but if you’re not, you probably live in a place where the power could go off easily in a winter storm.
I lived in California in the early aughts when we got to see how much “deregulation” screwed up electricity. (I fortunately lived in Los Angeles which refused to deregulate, we were needless to say fine compared to the rest of the state)
It’s interesting how many crazy MAGAs are commenting on here. I hope this doesn’t say something about Nate. It’s also amusing to see how many people on here are trying to spin abortion so that it’s no big deal for Republicans, Trumps 15 week ban might even be a good thing for them politically. (What’s also amusing is how many of them are pretending to really believe in a 15 week ban or be ambivalent about abortion when it’s obvious none of them are really like this)
You won't find me defending Trump in any way. In fact, I think Trump should take the lead on this issue and advocate for 15-week federal ban. A great way to ensure Biden remains in the White House. :)
Abortion is the one issue national Republicans run away from, it’s the one issue even Trump doesn’t try to own the libs on. For decades abortion was a winning issue for Republicans but not now. I don’t care what the polling says, it’s obvious voters are more motivated to protect reproductive rights than are against abortion. I dont know if it’ll be enough to reelect Biden, but it’s clearly not a good issue for Republicans
I believe I last saw that the border trumps (no pun intended) other issues for the majority right now, but no doubt the more Republicans go after abortion rights and IVF, they worse they will fare.
>I don’t begrudge anyone for being concerned about climate change
This paragraph reflects a common misconception that living in warm environments is bad for the environment, which simply isn't accurate. It takes more yearly energy to heat a home in a cold climate than cool it in a warm one. In theory the environmentally conscious thing to do would be for everybody to move to the sun belt and keep the AC on, ideally powered by the cheap and easy solar we get there.
Oh absolutely there are issues living in Florida, but "home cooling energy cost" is not one of them, and in fact it's better for the environment to rely on an AC in Florida than a heater in Vermont for instance
And why is that? I don’t see the evidence of that one way or another. I do know living in a Southern state I use my AC more than I used my heater in New York and of course I also use my heater in the South.
The big problem is living in areas with a near 100% of natural disasters like living close to the coast increases the risks to both property and lives that living in VT say doesn’t. That’s the big problem with living in these areas quite aside from the direct impact on the environment. We need to stop subsidizing people or subsidizing as much the people who live in areas with lots of wildfires like Malibu or in the path of hurricanes.
I don't understand how that could be true thermodynamically, is there an article explaining it? I would have thought the only factors are the annual weighted inside/outside temperature delta and the fact that all waste heat energy is useful when heating and counter-productive when cooling.
Is this some result of the inefficiencies of furnaces relative to air conditioners (which are basically one-way heat pumps, after all)?
The delta between a hot sun belt day to room temperature is rarely over 40 degrees, whereas a cold winter can be 50 60 70 below room temperature. Beyond that, as you assume, an air conditioner is effectively a reverse heat pump and they generally have a coefficient of performance in the 2 to 3 range, while most home heating is done with fossil fuel or resistive heating at 1. Beyond that the electric grid is getting greener and greener while fossil fuels for heat aren't.
I don't think he meant it like that. I think he meant that if the climate doomers are correct Florida will within a few decades be some combination of underwater, and hotter than the surface of the sun. Of course, that isn't happening and doesn't look likely to, but a lot of liberals believe it nonetheless.
We’ve had the 5 hottest years on record in the last 5 years in Florida. Miami and Miami Beach have so much water incursion that they are literally raising the streets to keep them above water. We have given people the right to shoot bears because we’ve so destroyed their habitats that they now live adjacent to suburbia. Every year for the last 5 years we’ve been hit or nearly hit by a severe hurricane. (Between 1964 when I was born and 1992 when I moved back to Florida from Europe we had NEVER had a hurricane—or even a hurricane evacuation). Andrew hit in 1992, and the frequency and violence of the storms has increased substantially every year since. The rate of flooding has risen precipitously. And regardless of where you stand politically, the actuaries in insurance companies apparently agree with the “climate doomers” because they are all either raising premiums by orders of magnitude or leaving the state of Florida because they can’t make the numbers work given the disaster likelihood.
Between 1964 and 1992 Florida had no hurricanes? That's an interesting claim I hadn't heard before. Do you have a link to somewhere I can read more about it?
Considering how the last 2 elections have gone for Dems, perhaps writing FL off in the short term isn’t a bad idea. I live in a red state, the disdain the people in my state feel towards Blue America makes however Dems feel about Red states feel like an absolute love affair.
And you've hit on something here (although you're not the first to do so): "contempt". Another word we can use is "disdain". The more Americans who feel those emotions about Americans who don't share their political views, the less functional our politics will be. I live in a blue state, and that's by intention; that said, I don't "despise" people in "red states". I do however think that Trump supporters have certain values I find deplorable and detestable, and will do my best to ensure that my vote works to make sure that he in particular does not return to power.
I have lived in blue states and I am back in a red state. They hate us much more than people in blue states hate them. Owning and resenting the libs are what they live for while we are perfectly happy to not think about them
As a former South Florida resident for 20 years, I'm wondering if most of the folks moving there are dying there. One of the local jokes is that it's 'God's Waiting Room'.
What the Covid data shows is that the elderly in Florida are on average healthier than the elderly in other states. So NY has by far a bigger nursing home population than Florida because in order to move to Florida one has to have enough money for a single family home AND be healthy enough to move away from family.
Those top three out-migration states have about eleven people, total, living in them. It seems fairly easy to swing the percentage with just a few people moving.
Notwithstanding the main thrust of the article, the Midwest ranking low on both domestic in- and out-migration was interesting to me. My home states of MN and WI are way down there and that's what specifically caught my eye, but you also see IL and MI and probably some others.
Morewithstanding the article, you wouldn't catch me or my cohort dead in Florida outside of conference season, but self-selecting samples gonna self-select.
I would suppose that if you look at the people most likely to leave a state, they're going to be, by far, those who have the shallowest roots there. So it makes sense that for the most part, a state's level of outmigration and in-migration are going to be correlated.
My family has roots in what I regard as an especially dismal corner of the Midwest. I was recently there for a funeral and was struck by how little had changed since the last time I was there, maybe 10 years ago (also for a funeral). I look at the population statistics and they're remarkably static. The county I was in had almost an identical population to 50 years ago. It should be pretty clear no one is moving there, which also means no one is leaving.
And indeed, everyone else in my extended family stayed. My branch of the family is the odd one for leaving.
IMO the insurance rates have got to push people out sooner or later... my understanding is that most companies have left and the few that remain must/can/do charge whatever they want as costs spiral and competition vanishes. Not sure how the housing market can survive when you can't insure the houses. But who knows?
Interestingly, despite how conservative the government is here (ie, no expanded Medicaid, near to lowest unemployment insurance rates, etc), we have a state-funded home insurer “of last resort”. The only criteria to get insured by it are to have either been dumped by your own company, or to have been offered premiums that are considered too high. Essentially, we have socialized our homeowners insurance to subsidize the construction industry since the actuarial tables no longer work for for-profit insurance companies. Ironic, huh?
I was going to say the same thing. There is a lagging impact on this too - if someone is paying homeowners insurance via escrow, their monthly payments don’t reflect the impact of the price hikes for up to a year later. Wouldn’t be surprised if that creates a bubble type situation 3 years from now
I despise Florida. I am learning to like Miami. Miami is absolutely NOT like the rest of the state.
My husband, on the other hand, would LOVE for us to move to Florida because he hates Ohio (where we live).
I get it; it's cold in the winter and grey for half the year. But I am weird in that I prefer to bundle up in the cold than wanting to tear my skin off in the heat.
>Finally, there may simply be a certain amount of snobbery here.
I think this has some to do with it, I'm not part of the group you're talking about (given that I'm not American nor a lib/leftist), but I'm culturally and temperamentally close enough, and Miami (even though it's a diverse city with lots of cool places) just represents so much of the worst consumerists excesses of Latin American upper/upper-middle classes. It triggers a (mild) disgust reaction in me, and I'd venture it does the same on many people.
Article about how Florida's population statistics demonstrate revealed preferences that go against the media blob narrative. Ok, cool.
The comments: "i haaaaaate florida so much it's the worst place ever, and here's why that reflects well upon ME and why I am so obviously superior in intellect and culture to those stinky people who live there." like congrats, i guess.
There's nothing wrong with people liking Florida - plenty of people do - but it has a lot of drawbacks...and not just political ones.
Name a perfect state.
You represent an exceptional window into pure Florida Thought (TM).
and yet here you are trying to prove your own superiority to yourself. pure cope. you can try to call me stupid. but at the end of the day i'm the one who can go walk outside to a pool right now. it's a high of 86 today. be well, sharty.
Two comments in a row where you aggressively defend yourself against those who would call you stupid--of which, as of this writing, is zero people.
extremely disingenuous reading of the comments but since we're arguing about arguing, i guess it would make sense to play dumb to call someone else dumb. all the same, stupid is as stupid does. so, i hope you enjoyed spending time on this, you insecure and allegedly stupid individual.
Absolutely fascinating and fair article by Nate Silver who works strenuously here to avoid the TDS affliction and weak research methodology of his partisan lefty journalism peers.
The note about California/New York out-migration is a Twainian use of statistics. Sure the averages are "average" or "low" but when the gross numbers are looked at... it becomes more clear. Lots of people are fleeing California and NY...
If you’re using out-migration numbers as a proxy for “how much do residents of this state like it there,” which is what this article is broadly about, then the average is the relevant statistic - I don’t view that as misleading.
Not really. It is highly unlikely that the distribution is equally weighted across all socioeconomic and cultural divides.
Of course not, but how does that make the top-line numbers misleading? It is simply true that CA residents were less likely to leave CA than WY residents were to leave WY, for example.
Here's how:
In times of high interest rates, relocating from one's primary domicile is extremely cost prohibitive. Many people who might want to move, find that it is impossible to sell their home and/or finance a new one elsewhere. That NY and CA have among the most restrictive NIMBY laws doesn't help either.
What is happening in these two states is that those who are leaving are the ones who not only want to do so - but can afford to do so. There are probably thousands more with the same instinct, but lacking the financial wherewithal.
Were the data complete, and showing that out-migration is relatively constant among all socioeconomic groups, that would be one thing. But we never get the devil in the details, just the "top line" number.
Assuming that an "average" or "median" tells the "truth" is using statistics the way a drunk uses a lamppost - for support rather than illumination. Like this tweet: https://twitter.com/NHL/status/1774975711549198742
The achievement may be worthy - but it doesn't at all tell the story. One of the two players produced points at a 53% rate better than the other. Which one? The stat used doesn't say.
No, this is nonsense. First of all, it is still very much a seller’s market in CA - homes sell fast and for high prices. CA’s NIMBYism doesn’t make it harder to leave.
Your theory is that, although a higher fraction of people left WY than CA, a higher fraction of people would leave CA *if they could*. But the average income is *higher* in CA than WY, so it should be *easier* for the typical Californian to move somewhere with low cost of living than for the typical Wyomingite to move somewhere that likely has a *higher* cost of living.
Even if your theory were accurate, it still doesn't match your claim of "percentages are misleading - the top-level numbers are meaningful." Note that Florida has the fourth-highest raw domestic out-migration of any state, simply because its rate of out-migration is only moderately lower than average and it's the third-largest state.
California's NIMBY makes it impossible for middle class people to afford to live there and/or transition from renter to owner. These people are the types to leave.
The idea that the reasons people leave WY and CA are the same is ludicrous.
It would be interesting to see data about who is leaving which states.
CA has many low income/homeless because they are dependent on the government handouts and the weather. Plus the "undocumented" who have been living in CA for a long time are probably loathe to move to places where they won't be in "sanctuary."
WY loses people because of weather more than CA, but also probably economic opportunity, because the state government doesn't redistribute funds from the "rich" to the "poor" as much as others.
The reason the aggregate average and median data is all bullshit is that it doesn't speak to the reasons why people are leaving, and how the personal economics affects the decision making.
Just saying x% left CA and y% left WY doesn't explain what is going on in this country. There is a big sort going on - and those who find certain government policies intolerable are getting the fuck out of dodge. And there are many more who would love to do so - but can't find a way to do it.
That’s been true as long as they have been large states. lots of people die every year in NY and California. It doesn’t mean that they are particularly deadly
This. As some of the largest state populations, the nominal numbers of exodus are staggering. Sure, the percentage small to average...
Yeah but that's the point of using a per-capita figure. If you're going to graph absolute numbers, then at any given time it's more or less just going to be a chart of biggest states to smallest states, and California would place singificantly higher in a ranking of "in-migration" by absolute numbers, despite being bottom of the list be relative numbers.
Yes, but the per capita only tells part of the story. You need the nominal, absolute number to see the scale. For example, since Covid, more than 650,000 people have relocated to Florida.
Sure, but that's really more just telling you about the scale of Florida itself as a large state. According to the data above, 780k people moved into California (2% of the population between foreign and domestic migration in a state of 39m) in 2022 alone. That would be a staggering number in most states (literally more than doubling the population if it happened in some), but the reality is that for California, even as a state with below-average outward migration in the same period, it's low enough that it's causing population stagnation.
Bigger states are just inevitably going to have more movement of people in either direction as a baseline (all else being equal they're going to have more absolute numbers of jobs, available houses, cities to choose from etc.), and Florida has been the 3rd biggest state for many years already. If I was going to add some useful data to the chart provided, it would probably be to show a percentage of net growth (or reduction) in poulation for each state, rather than doing the same data with absolute numbers in place of percentages.
Actually, the only problem with Silver's use of these stats is that he didn't go to the logical conclusion and calculate the net domestic migration for each state. When you do that (see my post way down below), you find that Florida is #4 on the list, whereas Cali is #50 and NY is #46. Therefore, even these numbers are pretty telling.
Florida is one of the last truly wild places in the US—and I’m not talking about the people. The wildlife here is abundant and...frisky. It’s not like rain forests or mountain regions where wildlife prefers to be hidden. Giant birds, reptiles, deer, and aquatic life like dolphin and manatee, all seem to want to say hello.
We have beaches, coasts, springs, rivers, lakes, forests, swamps and some of the most important wetland habitat in the world for migrating birds. Florida is paradise if you love the outdoors, which is doubly good if you prefer to avoid crowds of people.
If you love Florida like Floridians do, help us keep developers from destroying what’s left 💕
"If you love Florida like Floridians do, help us keep developers from destroying what’s left"
I think that perspective is part of why California is so expensive. NIMBY's have made it difficult for developers to build more houses (destroying what's left).
Most people who leave California do so because housing has gotten so expensive. Your plan would make Florida the same.
This. Development is why Florida is popular, it’s meeting demand with multi family housing, that is a nightmare squeezing lower incomes in places like CA.
You can want to protect the mangroves and be nothing like the grift of California governance all at the same time.
Are you kidding? We have a massive housing crunch. And while there is tons of multi-unit development, it is almost entirely at the very highest end of the market (I do mean highest —over $1m per unit). There are literally no incentives for building affordable housing since the State has outlawed local governments implementing any such protocols. Being less awful than California does not mean we have done anything to address housing. We haven’t. Most people who move here from other states are middle aged and older, and have the ability to buy single family homes in suburban areas and deed-restricted subdivisions. Meanwhile, young people, new college graduates, high school graduates—and all the millions of Floridians who work in our bloated service industry, can’t find anywhere to live.
I was not saying Florida was doing perfectly, but it is doing more than elsewhere despite DeSantis taking a NIMBY view of things recently to my dismay.
Still, where I live there are multiple multi-family apartments going up as well as even some townhomes (which I would like to see far more of, across the USA)
All new construction puts downward pressure on existing units and prices, so however bad it is or still getting in ways, it would be worse without it.
"Affordable housing" (aka long term subsidized units) is generally scam economics, the only solution is build build build. And yes, those $1M units still help although I would like to see zoning get resolved so less areas are either highrises or single families (see previous comment on wanting more townhomes)
yes, this. and the other thing that’s rotten is that local govts don’t charge “impact fees” for these developments so the taxpayer winds up with the burden of financing the infrastructure that feeds their profit and takes away our ecosystems.
The State of Florida has imposed strict limits on the impact fees that local governments can charge developers. So, municipalities' hands are tied.
That's the biggest problem we have, that this State administration has essentially run roughshod over home rule.
AMEN! yes. 100% i’ve worked on local ballot initiatives and saw what they think of home rule.
call me crazy but I really don't want to live anywhere that has giant reptiles which can eat me
Sharks too! Some aggressive species love spots along the East Coast. Also Man-O-War jellyfish. Super bad.
We just went out to Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge last weekend to see the gators. It’s an amazing place b/c you’ve got NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building in view the whole time while viewing dinosaurs, basically, just a dozen feet away. Jarring and wonderful at the same time. It funny--we mostly bump into Europeans out there.
Space Coast rules.
Yep. Florida leads the country in random gator spottings, sharks are out there and anyone who's been to Florida several times has probably been stung by jelly fish, which isn't pleasant. Then you've got red tide, swarms of stink bugs and skeeters, sunburn if you don't double up on sunscreen and traffic is terrible in all the popular beach destinations. At Spring Break and the first weeks of college breaks, you're invaded by an army of 18 to 23-year-olds that's going to be drunk 12 hours a day.
Still, every time I've been I've had a great time. I could look at the ocean (I prefer the Gulf of Mexico) and the sunsets all day.
I live in Troy, Alabama - 2 1/2 hours from the popular beaches of the Panhandle. Travellers heading down Highway 231 going to and from Florida helps keep our economy afloat.
Alabama is perceived as a very poor state, which, in one sense, it is. Still, it's amazing how many families I know who own or once-owned beach places. At one time, half of the homes on the beach in Panama City and the Destin area were owned by Alabamians. You can be there in no time.
It's good to know people who have beach homes (or condos)!
The good news is that you can eat them too, and they're delicious. Whenever I visit Florida, I make a point of finding restaurants that serve gator bites.
I find that most non-Floridians (I'm native born in miami), do not realize the extent of the amazing crystal rivers and springs in Florida inland. There are over 1000 fresh water springs in Florida, absolutely gorgeous, fun, tubing, snorkeling, caves, it's an amazing state.
Add in beaches, fishing, excellent college and pro sports, no state tax, a stones throw from Caribbean resorts...
https://floridadep.gov/fgs/fgs/content/springs
we do trails and kayak all over FL and usually the real tourists we see are from Canada/Europe. there’ll be townies enjoying springs or fishing on rivers, but tourists are usually from far away.
also, floridians tend toward motor boats instead of quiet forms of nature-seeing, which is a shame b/c they’re missing nearly everything.
SAVE. THE. SCRUB. JAY.
It's a shame that the scrub jay isn't the state bird. You have to admit the Northern Mockingbird is a really lame choice for Florida.
It needs to be the state bird before it’s too late
YESSSSSSS!
As a center-left ideology, I find this article mostly correct. No denying it with the population surge along with the rest of the sunbelt and Texas. People move to where they enjoy living. If I had any legitimate gripes about florida it would be that Florida disproportionately receive subsidized disaster assistance and that retirees spend their social security money down there rather than back in their home states where they originally lived and worked. At the same time it's better that they spend money in Florida and not move to Mexico or another country.
>retirees spend their social security money down there rather than back in their home states where they originally lived and worked.
Worth noting that elder care and retirement life, like any industry, exhibits agglomeration effects. It's not just climate. Florida is legitimately better at providing the services that old people want than other places, because it has an enormous industry of people whose entire professional careers are about providing services to old people (an industry which is very helpfully overlapping with the related but distinct hospitality and tourism sector broadly, another sector that agglomerates in FL, especially central FL)
In effect, the rest of the country is engaging in a comparative advantage trade with Florida -- Florida provides elder care services, other states provide durable goods, food, etc.
That’s not entirely accurate. While Florida has the highest number of elderly residents, it has some pretty mediocre outcomes. It costs more to be old here. The average per person spending on hospitals, doctors, home care and extended stay are all more greater than the national average. At the same time, hospitalized people who recuperate in nursing homes end up readmitted to the hospital more frequently. And assistive care providers (including home health aids, nurses and CNAs) are all paid less here (likely affecting both care quality and staffing).
You mean leftist, not progressive. Theres nothing progressive or liberal about hating the 75% of the country that doesnt align to your beliefs.
lol it really sounds like it’s the Republican Party that hates 75% of the country.
lol it really sounds like you conflate hate with 'disagrees with'.
LOL, I live in a MAGA county, if anything calling it hate is an understatement. There is nothing about Trump or Trump rallies that’s just “disagreeing with” Dems on.
The funny thing is MAGAs can never, ever under any circumstance admit we are right about anything.
You hit the nail on the head in that we think you are right on very little. We have profound differences in policy. Republicans don't hate Dems for it; we don't want your policies. Dems on the other hand have a tendency to throw terms around like racist, fascist, 'put y'all back in chains', etc. as opposed to arguing the reasons why taxes should go up or etc.
My feelings about policy have changed little my entire life. Trump regardless of his personality, has more closely matched my desires policy by policy down the line, yet I have never been called a Nazi by people who I thought were friends until 2016...
lol dude the Republican Party at this point is totally post policy. The notion this is about police or anything is laughable horseshit.
Dude I live in a Trump 2-1 county. I know these people, it’s about hate and owning the libs. Try bullshitting someone else.
Sorry, you don't get to mind-read and tell me that is reality. Have a great life.
I've considered moving to Florida for the following reasons:
1) I want to send my kids to private school/homeschool and Florida is going to hand me $8k/kid. I have three kids so that's 24k/year.
2) Florida has no income tax.
3) Cost of living, especially housing, is cheaper. There are a lot of exciting housing developments down there.
4) It's a red state with a good economy.
5) It's demographics are pretty good, and its Hispanic population seems to have broken right (Cubans are solid).
The weather, costs of moving, and giving up a low mortgage rates are the only things holding me back. If I could have moved before rates went up I would have.
Florida is not a red state. It is Florida.
California and Florida have the same Gini coefficient. New York is more unequal. This despite the fact that Florida has a lot of retirees with lower fixed incomes.
And of course being lower income is much more pleasant in Florida. You can afford things which are unattainable in blue states.
Florida is capable building houses, a great accomplishment blue states can't figure out.
I don't see how providing an environment retirees value enough to move across the country is "looting".
CA and NY achieved their wealth in an earlier era before monolithic blue rule. Since then they have been degrading, and people fleeing the states is just a sign of the decay.
Medicare and Medicaid fraud is something I'm very familiar with myself, and I've seen no evidence Florida is worse than anywhere else. There are a lot of old people there, so of course the scale is going to be big, but there is plenty of fraud all around the country.
"This isn't about a contest between red and blue states."
I thought that was the point of this substack essay. Deep blue places like CA and NY are seeing huge outmigration to places like TX and FL. For all the railing about Red America people in those places do, they are winning the revealed preference contests of where people choose to live.
"At least we agree on something."
Fair enough.
"enormous social and economic inequality," were you describing San Francisco and NYC or Florida?
Nate, good article, but if people were really worried about Climate Change they dang sure wouldn't be moving to Florida, and especially the coastal and beach communities in Florida.
The number of hurricanes that hit Florida in a given hurricane season haven't gone up and Panama City Beach and Destin are still not under water. It's hot and humid in the summer in Florida ... but, as someone who lives in south Alabama and who visits Florida often, trust me here - it's always been hot in the summer in Florida. Alabama too.
The winters might be a little milder than they were 50 years ago, but that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
The rate of sea level rise is 3.4mm per year or about 1 foot every 90 years. There is nothing to worry about for any person alive today, we'll all be dead before it's a problem for the lowest areas of Florida. But the land rises quickly as you move away from the shoreline. I'm at 25 feet ASL in Jacksonville. It'll be a couple of millennia before the sea rises to this point.
Have you ever noticed how many rich democrats love to buy oceanfront homes? They aren't worried either, no matter what comes out of their mouths.
I have noticed all the Climate Change warriors have nice places ... at the beach!
Texas has worse winters now…essentially a winter storm a year that is more disruptive than a hurricane.
And in Texas, the Republicans in their constant need for deregulation, have provoked some of the winter time catastrophes Texans experience. Deregulation in that market leads to more competition and also discourages the attempts at the winterization needed to prevent Texans being cold during storms and winter, so in the name of short term greed the Republicans in Texas are guilty of a failure to plan. I guess that’s OK if you’re a rich Texan, but if you’re not, you probably live in a place where the power could go off easily in a winter storm.
I lived in California in the early aughts when we got to see how much “deregulation” screwed up electricity. (I fortunately lived in Los Angeles which refused to deregulate, we were needless to say fine compared to the rest of the state)
It’s interesting how many crazy MAGAs are commenting on here. I hope this doesn’t say something about Nate. It’s also amusing to see how many people on here are trying to spin abortion so that it’s no big deal for Republicans, Trumps 15 week ban might even be a good thing for them politically. (What’s also amusing is how many of them are pretending to really believe in a 15 week ban or be ambivalent about abortion when it’s obvious none of them are really like this)
You won't find me defending Trump in any way. In fact, I think Trump should take the lead on this issue and advocate for 15-week federal ban. A great way to ensure Biden remains in the White House. :)
lol
Abortion is the one issue national Republicans run away from, it’s the one issue even Trump doesn’t try to own the libs on. For decades abortion was a winning issue for Republicans but not now. I don’t care what the polling says, it’s obvious voters are more motivated to protect reproductive rights than are against abortion. I dont know if it’ll be enough to reelect Biden, but it’s clearly not a good issue for Republicans
I believe I last saw that the border trumps (no pun intended) other issues for the majority right now, but no doubt the more Republicans go after abortion rights and IVF, they worse they will fare.
>I don’t begrudge anyone for being concerned about climate change
This paragraph reflects a common misconception that living in warm environments is bad for the environment, which simply isn't accurate. It takes more yearly energy to heat a home in a cold climate than cool it in a warm one. In theory the environmentally conscious thing to do would be for everybody to move to the sun belt and keep the AC on, ideally powered by the cheap and easy solar we get there.
Living in a disaster prone area is a big problem for the humans that live there which is a serious problem for the rest of the country and one reason lots of insurance companies are leaving. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/14/business/farmers-homeowners-insurance-florida.html
Oh absolutely there are issues living in Florida, but "home cooling energy cost" is not one of them, and in fact it's better for the environment to rely on an AC in Florida than a heater in Vermont for instance
And why is that? I don’t see the evidence of that one way or another. I do know living in a Southern state I use my AC more than I used my heater in New York and of course I also use my heater in the South.
The big problem is living in areas with a near 100% of natural disasters like living close to the coast increases the risks to both property and lives that living in VT say doesn’t. That’s the big problem with living in these areas quite aside from the direct impact on the environment. We need to stop subsidizing people or subsidizing as much the people who live in areas with lots of wildfires like Malibu or in the path of hurricanes.
Because physically heating a home by X degrees simply uses more energy than cooling it by X degrees.
I don't understand how that could be true thermodynamically, is there an article explaining it? I would have thought the only factors are the annual weighted inside/outside temperature delta and the fact that all waste heat energy is useful when heating and counter-productive when cooling.
Is this some result of the inefficiencies of furnaces relative to air conditioners (which are basically one-way heat pumps, after all)?
The delta between a hot sun belt day to room temperature is rarely over 40 degrees, whereas a cold winter can be 50 60 70 below room temperature. Beyond that, as you assume, an air conditioner is effectively a reverse heat pump and they generally have a coefficient of performance in the 2 to 3 range, while most home heating is done with fossil fuel or resistive heating at 1. Beyond that the electric grid is getting greener and greener while fossil fuels for heat aren't.
I don't think he meant it like that. I think he meant that if the climate doomers are correct Florida will within a few decades be some combination of underwater, and hotter than the surface of the sun. Of course, that isn't happening and doesn't look likely to, but a lot of liberals believe it nonetheless.
We’ve had the 5 hottest years on record in the last 5 years in Florida. Miami and Miami Beach have so much water incursion that they are literally raising the streets to keep them above water. We have given people the right to shoot bears because we’ve so destroyed their habitats that they now live adjacent to suburbia. Every year for the last 5 years we’ve been hit or nearly hit by a severe hurricane. (Between 1964 when I was born and 1992 when I moved back to Florida from Europe we had NEVER had a hurricane—or even a hurricane evacuation). Andrew hit in 1992, and the frequency and violence of the storms has increased substantially every year since. The rate of flooding has risen precipitously. And regardless of where you stand politically, the actuaries in insurance companies apparently agree with the “climate doomers” because they are all either raising premiums by orders of magnitude or leaving the state of Florida because they can’t make the numbers work given the disaster likelihood.
Between 1964 and 1992 Florida had no hurricanes? That's an interesting claim I hadn't heard before. Do you have a link to somewhere I can read more about it?
The point is not that you will contribute to climate change by moving to Florida, it's that you will become a frontline victim of it.
"However, progressive political types seem inclined to write Florida off, often even treating it with disdain."
As famously illustrated here every time an election doesn't go their way there: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/854/701/622.gif
I wonder how he defines progressive.
Considering how the last 2 elections have gone for Dems, perhaps writing FL off in the short term isn’t a bad idea. I live in a red state, the disdain the people in my state feel towards Blue America makes however Dems feel about Red states feel like an absolute love affair.
And you've hit on something here (although you're not the first to do so): "contempt". Another word we can use is "disdain". The more Americans who feel those emotions about Americans who don't share their political views, the less functional our politics will be. I live in a blue state, and that's by intention; that said, I don't "despise" people in "red states". I do however think that Trump supporters have certain values I find deplorable and detestable, and will do my best to ensure that my vote works to make sure that he in particular does not return to power.
I have lived in blue states and I am back in a red state. They hate us much more than people in blue states hate them. Owning and resenting the libs are what they live for while we are perfectly happy to not think about them
As a former South Florida resident for 20 years, I'm wondering if most of the folks moving there are dying there. One of the local jokes is that it's 'God's Waiting Room'.
What the Covid data shows is that the elderly in Florida are on average healthier than the elderly in other states. So NY has by far a bigger nursing home population than Florida because in order to move to Florida one has to have enough money for a single family home AND be healthy enough to move away from family.
Look at the raw data in cost and outcomes for elderly residents. It’s not rosy—despite whatever you’re citing. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/datacenter/florida
Those top three out-migration states have about eleven people, total, living in them. It seems fairly easy to swing the percentage with just a few people moving.
Notwithstanding the main thrust of the article, the Midwest ranking low on both domestic in- and out-migration was interesting to me. My home states of MN and WI are way down there and that's what specifically caught my eye, but you also see IL and MI and probably some others.
Morewithstanding the article, you wouldn't catch me or my cohort dead in Florida outside of conference season, but self-selecting samples gonna self-select.
Hilarious how someone came to demonstrate exactly the phenomenon the article was written about.
I would suppose that if you look at the people most likely to leave a state, they're going to be, by far, those who have the shallowest roots there. So it makes sense that for the most part, a state's level of outmigration and in-migration are going to be correlated.
My family has roots in what I regard as an especially dismal corner of the Midwest. I was recently there for a funeral and was struck by how little had changed since the last time I was there, maybe 10 years ago (also for a funeral). I look at the population statistics and they're remarkably static. The county I was in had almost an identical population to 50 years ago. It should be pretty clear no one is moving there, which also means no one is leaving.
And indeed, everyone else in my extended family stayed. My branch of the family is the odd one for leaving.
IMO the weather in Florida is gross outside of January and February. I’ve gone to conferences there in November and found it uncomfortably muggy.
But, as you said, self-selection.
If they try to send me one more time to the accursed Orlando World Center Marriott, they're going to have to fire me.
word to that
That’s 100% fair, actually
Y’all missing out on the best natural springs in the world.
IMO the insurance rates have got to push people out sooner or later... my understanding is that most companies have left and the few that remain must/can/do charge whatever they want as costs spiral and competition vanishes. Not sure how the housing market can survive when you can't insure the houses. But who knows?
Interestingly, despite how conservative the government is here (ie, no expanded Medicaid, near to lowest unemployment insurance rates, etc), we have a state-funded home insurer “of last resort”. The only criteria to get insured by it are to have either been dumped by your own company, or to have been offered premiums that are considered too high. Essentially, we have socialized our homeowners insurance to subsidize the construction industry since the actuarial tables no longer work for for-profit insurance companies. Ironic, huh?
I was going to say the same thing. There is a lagging impact on this too - if someone is paying homeowners insurance via escrow, their monthly payments don’t reflect the impact of the price hikes for up to a year later. Wouldn’t be surprised if that creates a bubble type situation 3 years from now
I despise Florida. I am learning to like Miami. Miami is absolutely NOT like the rest of the state.
My husband, on the other hand, would LOVE for us to move to Florida because he hates Ohio (where we live).
I get it; it's cold in the winter and grey for half the year. But I am weird in that I prefer to bundle up in the cold than wanting to tear my skin off in the heat.
The blizzards (mostly) keep out the riff-raff.
>Finally, there may simply be a certain amount of snobbery here.
I think this has some to do with it, I'm not part of the group you're talking about (given that I'm not American nor a lib/leftist), but I'm culturally and temperamentally close enough, and Miami (even though it's a diverse city with lots of cool places) just represents so much of the worst consumerists excesses of Latin American upper/upper-middle classes. It triggers a (mild) disgust reaction in me, and I'd venture it does the same on many people.