A study produced by the Empire Center for New York State Policy examined Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service data to determine the fiscal impact of high domestic out-migration on New York State and New York City. The picture it paints is a troubling one: From 2000 to 2008, more New York residents, and a higher percentage of the state's population, left the state than any other state in the Union.
More than 1.5 million New York State residents decamped for other states during that period, representing 8 percent of the state's 2000 population. Of that number, 1.1 million were New York City residents - one in every seven Big Apple denizens.
Based on Internal Revenue Service figures for the period from 2001 through 2007, New York taxpayers leaving the state took nearly $30 billion in net income with them during that period. Losses ranged from a low of $3.9 billion in 2003, as the last recession was ending, to a high of $5.6 billion in 2005, when the economy was expanding as the real estate bubble formed. The report cautions that the actual impact on state income may be different as newcomers move in and incomes of the remaining residents change.
According to the study, new residents from abroad who move into New York City do not replace this lost income: migrants into New York County (Manhattan) in 2007 earned $20,538 less than those who left, and new arrivals in Richmond County (Staten Island) earned $20,066 less -- the biggest gaps in income between emigrants and immigrants in the state. Most of the emigrants from the state's more rural counties were replaced by better-off newcomers -- including some from downstate.
The study argues that New York's total tax burden, which consistently ranks among the nation's highest, plays a major role in driving the domestic out-migration of the more affluent, with high housing costs in the New York City region another contributing factor.
The Empire Center for New York State Policy is a project of the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research, a pro-free-market think tank that focuses on urban issues and policy.
Posted October 28th, 2009 by Sandy Smith
