Where We Came From, State by State

August 14, 2014 1:26 PM

A New York Times interactive graphic feature charting how Americans have moved between states since 1900.
posted by MoonOrb (28 comments total)

42% of North Carolinians weren't born in North Carolina! Surprising, and yet not. I was born to two transplants, and almost no one I knew growing up had two parents from NC. (And yet people up here in Yankeedom always expect me to have a Southern accent.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:38 PM on August 14, 2014

When I look at New Hampshire, Rhode Island and (especially) Vermont in that feature, for some inexplicable reason I have an overwhelming desire to go fry up some bacon in the kitchen.
posted by Wordshore at 1:42 PM on August 14, 2014

Wherever it is you came from, go back there. /s
posted by ChuckRamone at 1:47 PM on August 14, 2014

I'm trying.
posted by ckape at 1:48 PM on August 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

Damn. About the only way anyone gets to Louisiana or Michigan these days is via the birth canal.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:50 PM on August 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

So, wait, wait, what counts as your "home" state? Where you were born? I was born in New York State, spent 1 year there, then 3 in Michigan and then moved to Milwaukee before I started kindergarten. I was there until I was in my early 20s. I live in New York now, again.

Is Wisconsin really my home state?

Have I been living a lie?!
posted by droplet at 1:51 PM on August 14, 2014

No information on Dougestan?
posted by blue_beetle at 1:54 PM on August 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

(And yet people up here in Yankeedom always expect me to have a Southern accent.)

Tell me about it. My people have been in North Carolina since before the Revolutionary War, but I don't have an accent, which has puzzled a lot of Midwesterners.
posted by Rangeboy at 1:56 PM on August 14, 2014

I'd sure like to see this data sliced differently. Like rank the states by # of people who were born in that state, also rank by # of non-Americans now resident. Also it'd be nice to see the ribbons normalized by per-capita population. Sure, California has a lot of Texans in it, but is that because of a Texas/California affinity or because Texas has a lot of people in it?

The coloring is really helpful.
posted by Nelson at 2:00 PM on August 14, 2014

Only 74% of Pennsylvanians were born in Pennsylvania? I would have thought it to be about 90%. I guess that most of the newcomers must live in the eastern part of the state.
posted by octothorpe at 2:05 PM on August 14, 2014

showbiz_liz: 42% of North Carolinians weren't born in North Carolina!

When we moved to Cary, NC from Massachusetts in 2009, we were told that the name of the town was an acronym for Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.
posted by Rock Steady at 2:21 PM on August 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

It calls people from Indiana "Indianians" instead of the correct demonym "Hoosiers". *rolleyes*
posted by Cyclopsis Raptor at 2:30 PM on August 14, 2014

In the decade I lived in Atlanta, I only ever had three friends who were genuinely from there. Everyone else moved there from other places, sometimes because of school, sometimes because of a job (usually the case), and if you were gay, because you weren't alone anymore.
posted by Kitteh at 2:35 PM on August 14, 2014

When we moved to Cary, NC from Massachusetts in 2009, we were told that the name of the town was an acronym for Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.

That goes back to the '60s, when IBM moved into the new Research Triangle Park and brought hundreds of workers from up North. A lot of them bought homes in Cary.
posted by Rangeboy at 2:40 PM on August 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

It'd be interesting to know what percentage of the Non-Virginians are located in Northern Virginia versus Newport News/Virginia Beach area.

Now I want them to do the same thing, but for every century. Go!
posted by Atreides at 2:40 PM on August 14, 2014

These charts were compiled using Census microdata obtained from ipums.org at the University of Minnesota Population Center.

Just going to toot my own horn here:
That's my (pretty new) job, software development for the University of Minnesota Population Center. I work directly with making this census data consumable by outside entities like e.g. The NYTimes. We have a particular emphasis in "harmonizing" census variables across census samples. This particular article would not have been possible without that. Woot!

Working with historical censuses can be occasionally amusing if you're a data nerd like myself. Older censuses had some hilarious stuff measured, from the jebus cripes fully racist:

"If Indian, Percentage of Black Blood"

That one kills me. Hey, you're an Indian, we can, already have, and are anticipating F'ing you over for years to come. But let's just see how black you are too so we can decide whether we'll allow you to open a casino and/or vote in an election. America!

to the confusingly possibly racist:
"Free Population with Race, Sex, and Age Unspecified Except Indians Not Taxed"

And who is it that's not being taxed? And if Race is unspecified, how do you know they aren't Indians?

to the wtf:
"Mature Mules, Asses and Burros Not on Farms"

It is important to note that this does not measure Immature Non-Farm Asses.
posted by mcstayinskool at 2:42 PM on August 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

My dad was a (North Carolina native) IBMer and I can confirm that that joke is both old and completely true.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 3:02 PM on August 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

I moved from solid to liquid to gas by being heated. Changes in pressure helped the process along.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:34 PM on August 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Louisiana is one of the least diverse states when it comes to domestic migration – nearly 4 out of 5 residents were born in the state, a figure that hasn't changed much over the past century.

As a New Orleans' native, I must agree.
posted by JujuB at 4:28 PM on August 14, 2014

Nine percent of Marylanders were born in DC? I know a lot of Washingtonians have moved out to the suburbs, but that's almost as many people as live in DC now.
posted by psoas at 5:33 PM on August 14, 2014

Nine percent of Marylanders were born in DC? I know a lot of Washingtonians have moved out to the suburbs, but that's almost as many people as live in DC now.

Washington, DC has been described* as a place of "northern charm and southern efficiency." That may contribute.

The California-born make up 8% of the population of Utah and 12% of the population of Idaho -- two non-adjacent states. That's a lot of moviestar-ranchers and entertainmentlawyer-shepherds.


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*This quip is often attributed to JFK, but is in fact much older.
posted by Herodios at 6:48 PM on August 14, 2014

I was a little surprised that only 13% of residents of Virginia were foreign (outside of US) born. But my perspective is Fairfax County in the DC suburbs. The rest of the state probably looks more like other Southern States.

I was going to say that my children's classroom look far more than 13% foreign born, but that's not right. These kids were mostly born in the US. It's their parents who came from all over the place. This is largely why Fairfax County public schools are among the top in the nation.
posted by Loudmax at 7:40 PM on August 14, 2014

There is a long-standing gripe in WA about Californians coming up (80s & after) and overrunning the place, and I guess by comparison with pre-1980 that's true, but it's still a lot less than I would've expected.

Although apparently, per Herodios, there's been a significant out-migration from California to all over, enough that there's a little sidebar piece about it.

If anything, these numbers tend to underestimate the number of Californian expats because not all Californians were born in California. In fact, for most of the state’s history, people born there did not represent a majority of California’s population.

Mr. epersonae is 4th or 5th generation Washingtonian, and I moved here from, yes: California. He still occasionally gives me grief about it. On the other hand, I was quite unusual in my SoCal childhood for both of my parents being local, and even more so for having 2 grandparents who were born & raised in CA.
posted by epersonae at 9:24 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

It looks like only southerners move to Mississippi. Almost none of the population is foreign born, or from the Northeast or West Coast. What a surprise!
posted by monotreme at 11:55 AM on August 15, 2014

The Upshot just published a new treatment of the data. "this is a new kind of chart we are calling a Voronoi treemap map". Which is certainly quite a bit of infovis buzzword bingo, and is a fairly interesting treatment. Note that each polygon is one contributing state; only a few are labelled. Ie: the yellow in Texas is not all California.
posted by Nelson at 12:36 PM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Please quit calling them O-re-go-NI-ANS. They are O-re-GO-NOIDS.
posted by mule98J at 12:42 PM on August 15, 2014

I am a very rare third generation native Angeleno (from Los Angeles). Super interesting numbers there. Got my first love of stats looking at Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) in my high school bio classroom. I thought it was incredible that we could look at what caused death and morbidity and see if there were trends in those numbers. Four cases of typhoid this week!? Cool!
posted by Sophie1 at 12:48 PM on August 15, 2014

There is a long-standing gripe in WA about Californians coming up (80s & after) and overrunning the place . . .

And there was a light bulb joke to go with the gripes:

Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: 10,001. One to turn the bulb, and 10,000 to defend the border from Californians streaming across to "share the experience".
 
posted by Herodios at 1:21 PM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]