Why the middle class is moving from Mass.

5 December 2003

Dumb people are moving to New Hampshire. Smart people are moving to Massachusetts.

That's the upshot - a lot less crudely put, of course - of a new study on migration to and from the Bay State that was just released by the think-tank MassINC.

I guess most of us have always suspected that the Granite State - or is it the Granite-Headed State? - appeals to those who are not, shall we say, the best and the brightest. This is the place, after all, that has spent the last seven months in mourning because a couple of rocks fell off a mountain and wrecked up an optical illusion.

The good news from the MassINC study was that, over the last 12 years, 1.23 million people moved into Massachusetts. The bad news was that, during the same time, 1.44 million moved out. That's a loss of 213,000.

Of even greater interest was who was moving and where. More than a third of those who left the commonwealth ended up in New Hampshire. Compared to those who moved elsewhere, they were less well-educated, less likely to have professional or managerial jobs, older and more likely to be married with kids. Meanwhile, however, more people were moving into Massachusetts from states (such as New York and California) that are our economic competitors. And those new residents tended to be better educated, single and hold high- level, white-collar jobs.

Hence my conclusion: Smart in, dumb out.

MassINC's more politic conclusion? Middle-class families are leaving Massachusetts.

Surprised? I write this in the week the entire eastern half of the commonwealth came to a standstill because a few flakes of snow fell. What may be a surprise is that anyone lives here at all.

And if you're from New Hampshire, you might be forgiven for wondering whether the dumb ones might be those still living in a state that apparently can't handle a snowstorm in December.

So should we be worried by this middle class flight? And how significant is it really?

For one, if everyone's moving out, why are the roads getting more crowded?

During the same 12 years that MassINC examined, it turns out that the state's population actually increased by 411,000. A contradiction? MassINC says no. Its numbers (which relied on tax data from the IRS) don't include foreign immigrants, or births and deaths in the state, or even the students who go to school here. Still, there's something amiss. If migration out is offset by other sources of population growth, perhaps it's not that big a deal.

On top of that, even if one accepts MassINC's data, the number leaving is not all that large: an annual average loss of 18,000 compared to the total state population of 6.4 million.

Then, of course, there's the question ask by Jean-Paul Sartre: What's it all mean?

Perhaps nothing. The study describes what migration patterns look like but it doesn't go into why. Maybe people leave because housing elsewhere is cheaper, maybe it's the weather (turns out, most of those leaving the state head to Florida), maybe U-Haul was running a sale.

Or maybe they are moving to get a job.

One myth about New Hampshire is that people move there and then just commute back to jobs in Massachusetts. That's not what MassINC found, however. Instead, 80 percent of those who left ended up working in New Hampshire.

What does New Hampshire have that we don't?

A better mix of middle-class jobs.

Over the past decades, Massachusetts' business leaders have become infatuated with the notion of creating what they call a knowledge-based economy. Dominated by biotech, health care, higher education and the like, it's the kind of economy that needs smart, highly educated employees. It creates jobs that pay well - extremely well, in fact - and those rich people shop, eat out and otherwise have a high demand for services. As a result, those two sectors of the state's economy - high-paid knowledge-based industries and much lower-paid services - are growing.

What isn't? The more plain vanilla businesses in the middle, such as light manufacturing, that deliver jobs for people who don't have two university degrees.

That's not the case with New Hampshire or Florida or a number of other states. With more diverse economies, they are better places in which middle-class families can make a living. Thus, it may be that the middle-class flight MassINC worries about is a problem of our own making. Solving it - if that's even feasible and if that's something we want to do - would require us rethinking our zeal for an economy driven by knowledge-based businesses.

It's a sobering thought. Still, there's some good news in the study. The state from which Massachusetts is now attracting the most new residents? New York. I think it's a sign. Now that we have Curt Schilling, they know it's our year.

Talk back to Tom Keane at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.