Upstate NY hit hard as more migrate out

Upstate NY hit hard as more migrate out

John Roby, USA Today , WGRZ 9:26 AM. EDT March 23, 2017

http://www.wgrz.com/img/resize/conte...preset=534-401(Photo: Thinkstock)


The trickle of people leaving New York is beginning to look like a flood, particularly in parts of upstate.

New data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau show an estimated 73,000 people moved out of New York state between July 2015 and July 2016. That is nearly twice the figure for the previous two years.

Largely because of this out-migration, New York shrank in population last year by nearly 1,900, the data show.

People moving from the state had a significant effect in some upstate counties and metro areas, where population losses have been recorded annually since 2010. In the Binghamton metropolitan area, an average of more than three people moved to other states every day for the past six years.

An analysis of the Census Bureau data by USA TODAY Network journalists in New York found:

• Growth is highly regional. Only 16 of New York’s 63 counties gained population between July 2010 and July 2016.
• Contraction has been in the cards. The state’s net population loss last year followed five years of consistently smaller increases. From 2014 to 2015, New York gained an estimated 29,000 people.
• Very few places attract new residents. Just nine counties — five of them upstate — saw an increase in net migration between 2010 and 2016.

All five boroughs of New York City and Nassau County recorded population increases last year, as well as for the period between 2010 and 2016.

The upstate counties that gained population since 2010 include Monroe, up an estimated 3,300 people, or less than 1 percent, and Tompkins, up nearly 3,300 people, or 3 percent.

The largest estimated loss over that span was in Chautauqua County, down 5,400 people, or 4 percent. Broome County had the second-steepest estimated decline, at just under 5,400 people, or nearly 3 percent.

“This is not the first time we’ve seen a population decline in New York state,” said Peter Borsella, a demographer with the Census Bureau. “We saw this going on back in 2004; it hit a low point in 2006 and started to increase again … and tapered off in the last three to four years.”

Jan Vink, an extension associate with Cornell University’s Program on Applied Demographics, called domestic migration “one of the main drivers” of New York’s recent population decline.

In a report released Thursday by the Program on Applied Demographics to coincide with the Census Bureau data, Vink wrote that New York’s population growth of 367,000 between 2010 and 2016 equaled about 2 percent, below the national average of nearly 5 percent but in line with similar states.

But “throughout the state there are more people leaving than entering,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “We see this in a lot of states in the Northeast and the Midwest.”

The Census Bureau’s Borsella said a number of factors influence domestic migration.

“The economy usually plays a large role, but many other things such as family, jobs, the culture of a particular place, can play a role as well,” Borsella said.

Population change has far-reaching implications.

“If New York doesn’t grow as fast as the remainder of the nation, we lose (congressional) representation,” Vink said. “A lot of state and federal funding is tied to population numbers as well — for those sort of things, population certainly matters.”

After the 2010 census, for example, New York state lost two congressional districts due to a relative decline in population.

That left the state with two fewer members of Congress, and therefore two fewer electoral votes and on the whole less influence in Washington.

Ohio also lost two seats that year. Most of the gains took place in the South: Texas added four seats, Florida gained two, and Georgia and South Carolina each gained one.

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