Study shows more Americans staying put

Kansas migration

Kansas had a net loss of 473 households, with biggest losses going to Oklahoma and Colorado, according to an Associated Press analysis of Internal Revenue Service data of where taxpayers moved to from 2007 to 2008.

Christy Nameche moved with her family to Kendall County, Ill., in 2007, joining thousands of other hope-filled newcomers who made the county No. 1 in population growth in the nation that year.

Just two years later, the developer of Nameche’s new neighborhood has gone bankrupt, some neighbors face foreclosure, many lots sit empty and the long-awaited conversion of an adjacent field into a town park is stalled. Kendall County is struggling, another once-booming American locale gone bust.

Fast growth from 2007 to 2008, the early part of the recession, turned out to be a strong predictor of problems as the recession dragged on, according to an Associated Press analysis of recently released Internal Revenue Service migration data, which compares where taxpayers filed their returns from one year to the next.

Kendall County’s population more than doubled to 100,000 over the past decade. In the early months of the recession, people kept coming, before it was clear that the economy was starting to sour.

For every 4 percent increase in new taxpayers from 2007 to 2008, there was a 1 point increase in the Associated Press Economic Stress Index scores from the start of the recession until now.

AP’s Economic Stress Index calculates a score from 1 to 100 based on a county’s unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy rates. The higher the score, the worse off the county. The average county stress score was 10.2 in November 2009, the most recent month for which figures are available.

Kendall County’s score shot up from 8.06 in December 2007 to 17.9 in November 2009, one of the nation’s greatest gains in economic stress since the start of the recession. The county has been socked with a 10.5 percent unemployment rate, a 2 percent bankruptcy rate and a 6.3 percent foreclosure rate.

While its unemployment rate is only slightly higher than the national rate of 10 percent, its foreclosure rate is about four times higher than the national average and its bankruptcy rate is more than 1 1/2 times the national average.

Across the country, a lot of people are now staying put, whether they want to or not. IRS data shows a slowing down in U.S. mobility, a phenomenon supported by estimates released by the Census Bureau at the end of 2009. The 11.9 percent annual migration rate is the lowest in decades.

The AP’s analysis shows that counties with wealthier, better educated taxpayers generally were most likely to see county-to-county migration gains. Counties where the work force had large numbers of jobs in support positions — such as office administrators or payroll clerks — construction and mining, including high-paying jobs in oil and natural gas extraction, were also most likely to draw newcomers.

The AP analysis also showed something unusual in a fraction of the nation’s 3,141 counties: total incomes rose in more than 200 counties even though they lost households. That was because poorer migrants moved out and richer ones moved in. Topping that list were several counties known for beaches, second homes and retirees: Collier, Palm Beach and Pinellas counties in Florida and Barnstable County, Mass., home to Cape Cod.

“People who move tend to be younger and have lower incomes,” said demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution. “Normally, if there is a big influx of young people, that could pull down the income of an area and if there is a big outflux of young people that can raise income in an area.”

That appears to have happened in Collier County, Fla., which lost households to larger Florida communities such as Fort Myers and Miami as construction jobs and tourism jobs faded away in 2007 and 2008. But Collier County gained $729 million in total income from new, wealthier residents moving from suburban Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis and Long Island.

The same thing happened at the state level. Florida, New Hampshire and Vermont lost households but gained income.

Both Florida and Vermont got income boosts from New York and New Jersey, just as Florida lost households to Georgia, and Vermont lost residents to North Carolina.