State income taxes have little effect on migration

Off the Charts - The New York Times’ Upshot blog has published a fascinating set of graphs of Census Bureau data on interstate migration patterns since 1900, bolstering our argument that state income taxes don’t have a significant impact on people’s decisions about where to live.

We plotted the same Census data, which shows which states do the best job of retaining their native-born populations.  Our chart shows that taxes have little to do with the extent to which native-born people leave their states of origin.

If Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore’s claim (which other tax-cut advocates often repeat) that “taxes are indisputably a major factor in determining where . . . families locate” were true, states without income taxes would see below-average shares of their native-born populations leaving at some point in their lifetime, while states with relatively high income taxes would see the opposite.  But the graph shows no such pattern:

Three of the nine no-income-tax states perform very poorly in holding on to native-born residents.  Wyoming, Alaska, and South Dakota have three of the nation’s four highest shares of native-born residents who left the state. Four other no-income-tax states are closer to the middle of the pack.  Nevada is almost exactly in the middle of the state rankings, while New Hampshire and Tennessee fall almost equally below and above Nevada; Washington falls within that interval as well.  New Hampshire does no better in retaining its native born than its high-tax neighbor, Vermont.  Tennessee’s neighbor, North Carolina, has had the highest income tax rates among southern states for the past 20 years but outperformed nearly all of them in retaining its native born, tying for second nationally. Only two of the nine no-income-tax states are top performers in retaining their native born.  Three of the five states that retain the largest shares of their natives — California, Georgia, and North Carolina — have income taxes, and California and North Carolina in particular have had higher income taxes than their neighbors.  Texas and Florida are the only no-income-tax states that rank highly for retention.