Map: These states have the fewest ‘born-here’ residents
(NEXSTAR) — Maybe you have a friend who moved to California to pursue acting, a cousin who moved to New York for a job, or a grandparent who moved to Florida after retiring. With people moving in and out of states regularly, you may find yourself wondering who around you was even born and raised in your state.
In some parts of the country, residents are more likely to live in the state they were born in than others, newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows.
The state most likely to keep its homegrown residents around? Louisiana.
Census data shows that slightly more than 77% of Louisiana’s 4.57 million residents were born there. People born in Texas make up the next-largest subset of the state’s population but account for only about 3% of residents.
In only five other states, primarily in the Midwest, is the population 70% or more “homegrown”:
- Michigan: 75.8%
- Ohio: 74.3%
- Mississippi: 70.2%
- Pennsylvania: 70.1%
- Wisconsin: 70.1%
Iowa was close behind, with roughly 69.5% of its population being true Iowans.
In more than a dozen states, as well as the District of Columbia, over half of the residents say they were born in another state, Census data shows.
Nevada has the lowest percentage of Nevada-born residents at 27%. A whopping 46% say they were born in California and moved in at some point in their lives.
In only two other states is the locally-born population below 40%: Florida (35%) and Arizona (39%). Of the District of Columbia’s population, less than 34% were born in the U.S. capitol.
Why these areas are home to more non-local residents than others may be easy to explain: Nevada, Florida, and Arizona are all popular destinations for retirees, for example, while D.C. attracts lawmakers from across the country as well as other politically involved employees.
Other states in which less than half the population is homegrown are:
- New Hampshire: 40.4%
- Colorado: 41.1%
- Wyoming: 41.0%
- Delaware: 42.1%
- Alaska: 42.9%
- Idaho: 43.4%
- Oregon: 45.2%
- Washington: 46.1%
- Vermont: 46.5%
- Maryland: 46.9%
- Virginia: 48.6%
California — often viewed as a state sought out by those dreaming of palm trees while simultaneously the victim of a population exodus — has a population in which more than 56% are born-and-raised Golden Staters (the data doesn’t actually show if someone was born and raised in a state, just the state in which they were born and where they currently reside).
When it comes to someone leaving the state they were born in, the data seems to imply they don’t travel far. Take California, for example. Roughly 1-in-5 people living in Oregon and Arizona say they were born in neighboring California. Across the country in New Hampshire, residents born in neighboring Massachusetts make up almost 36% of the population. In Delaware, about 20% of the population was born across the border in Pennsylvania.
The map below shows where the second-largest group (or in Nevada’s case, the largest group) of each state’s population was born.
According to the Census data, over 30 million Americans say they were born in California, the most of any state. Almost 21.5 million Americans hail from Texas while 20.6 million were born in New York. Wyoming-born residents make up the smallest portion of America’s population with less than 536,000 saying they were born in the Western state. Vermont was close behind, with almost 548,000 Americans hailing from the Green Mountain State.
The Census data, which was compiled using the agency's annual American Community Survey, also reports how many residents were born out of the country. More than 11 million Californians say they were born in a foreign country — the data does not elaborate on which countries. In Texas and Florida, 5.9 million and 5.3 million residents were born out of the country, respectively. Wyoming has the fewest residents who were not born in America at roughly 24,900.
Florida has the highest population of Puerto Rico-born residents (538,000) and those born in the U.S. Virgin Islands (18,900). California has the highest population of residents born in American Samoa (6,800) and Guam (28,000). Washington state is home to the most Americans born in the Northern Mariana Islands (3,360).
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