Anyone know a good place to track movement of people from one state to another, preferably with a history? My wife and I have been noticing a lot of plates from out of state recently. Places we’ve never seen plates from before, including a couple from Hawaii. We know the economy in our area, Dallas TX, hasn’t been hit as hard as a lot of the country, and we’re wondering if we’re seeing an influx of people or just noticing/remembering the out of state plates more. We know we saw a bunch more Louisiana plates a few years ago when Katrina hit, but we’re seeing Tennessee, Illinois, tons of California, etc.
We’re just trying to figure out if we are seeing an actual influx, or if it’s our imagination.
Most states require people who move there to re-register their cars within a certain time, normally 90 days. A lot of people don’t bother*. That may mean that there are more people moving to your area (since they’ll have gotten new plates).
This leads to rather overzealous enforcement by the police - there are people (for example) with winter homes in Florida and summer homes in New York. The Florida car normally stays in Florida, and the NY one in NY, but if you bring the Florida car to New York for some reason, expect to get hassled about it if it stays parked in your driveway for a week or two.
Out-of-state plates could also mean visitors who prefer to drive rather than fly. Or even people that flew who are renting a car (I’ve rented cars at my destination that had out-of-state plates due to someone that rented a car for one-way long-distance travel).
Hawaii, though… that’s gotta be someone that migrated.
That map was really cool. Thanks for the link Mr. Downtown. It started me on a useful path. They said they got the data from the IRS. I found their site on US Migration Statistics and it has pretty close to the data I’m looking for, although only current to 2008. During that time Texas was growing rapidly in comparison to other states, with a net inflow of migrants from other states and countries. Looks like a net inflow of about 64,000 households, with an estimated number of individuals of about 140,000. California was leading the charge with a net inflow of about 12,000 households into Texas during that year, and a net loss of households for the state of about 20,000. I’ll see if I can put together a chart from some of the data. It may be a few years before I can get the data I really want though. This data is based on tax returns, so it’s always at least a year and a half behind. I’m wondering what the curves for these migrations from year to year are. I’m thinking Texas took a hockey stick during the recession and some states took a nose dive. The main reason I’m thinking this is the relative unemployment numbers and property values. Texas has had lower unemployment and more stable property values than a lot of states, which is probably attracting migrants.