Brain Drain Across the United States
jec.senate.gov
jec.senate.gov
That said, it’s incredibly underserved and there’s tons of very capable and friendly people.
Edit: maybe I didn’t get the intended point across - I’d ask though, how many people do you know that moved for cultural reasons, especially from hometowns? I’m in the LGBT community where almost every single person I meet has moved for cultural reasons.
A thing I like to say is that I am proud that I am from Ohio, but I'm also happy I'm not there now.
I’m from Florida but it’s not something I’m proud or not proud of. I’m proud of my kids. I’m proud of my work. I’m proud of my multi decade relationship with my wife. Those are things to be proud of.
When a class I belong to does something great, I feel I can only be proud to be a member of that class to the extent that I contributed to the great thing and that we worked together to achieve something greater than ourselves. Even then I’m proud that “we did that thing” not that “I’m a member of that group.”
Just a thought. I know many people are proud of where they are from but it’s irrational to me.
The LGBT thing is anecdotally true in my experience, and in particular, leaving your home state for college is a good socially-acceptable excuse to leave your home state and meet others you suspect are like you at exactly the same time that you're no longer a minor under your parents' control.
[1]https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018/estimate...
ID/UT/AZ -> Lower/middle class people can no longer afford to live comfortably in California
FL/WA -> People are getting sick of the progressively longer, shittier winters in the midwest/northeast
Interestingly, unlike the other issues you've listed, pro-choice support does not vary a whole lot by age. 63% support from 18-29, 59% for 30-59, and about 57% for everyone older than that (https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-aborti...) Whatever causes the difference on that issue is not due to age.
Seeing your edit, I can understand why you think it's mostly cultural rather than economic, but I definitely think it's both.
If you look at the 2017 Net Brain Drain it shows the following top gainers: - Texas - Virginia - Illinois - Maryland - Colorado - California - New Jersey - New York - Massachussets
Georgia and North Carolina also showed strong gains (along with many other states). That may be blue-leaning but it's not a landslide.
It's more like people are concentrating in the biggest cities generally, and to the degree that there's a blue-shift its that states dominated by their urban population lean democrat and states dominated by a rural population lean republican, so the cultural change follows the demographic shifts rather than driving them.
Of course as pointed out by a sibling, it’s kind of an irrelevant point anyway. The brain migration is away from rural areas (which are red, regardless of state), to big cities (which are blue, regardless of state). That only reenforces the parent’s hypothesis that intellectuals resent the anti-intellectual bent republicans have taken in recent times.
1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/247025/democratic-states-exceed...
There was plenty of anti-intellectualism in the US in the 70s. The movie "Revenge of the Nerds" wasn't made in a cultural vacuum. Neither was "Animal House". Sports heros have always been worshiped, not so with intellectuals (other than Einstein).
Much of this changed with Bill Gates. He was derided for being a nerd for years, until he made so much money people stopped laughing at him.
You’re not wrong about anti-intellectualism always being a thing though, point taken!
The net result is that more educated people tend to have fewer children than the less educated. If we assume educational attainment is correlated with intelligence, and children's intelligence is correlated to parental intelligence, this doesn't bode well for future generations. It seems like we as a society need to figure out a way to make "have children at a reasonable age" not be a low-status move for highly educated / driven / intelligent women.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/fertility/...
Also what we care about is societal contribution which primarily happens through work and we're terrible at making people better at their jobs through the education system.
And there are no educational interventions that come close to the effect size of intelligence or conscientousness.
Even for IQ scores it‘s not so clear, as our measure of IQ is variable and there are no longitudinal studies to my knowledge showing what you claim.
And by conscientiousness I meant the big 5 psychology measure which also has large longitudinal studies.
Sweden for example has no minimum wage and fully voucher-ized education which are anathema to the US left.
So I'd disagree there aren't things holding students in the US back, they just hold the entire DNC captive.
Sweden also has a flat tax. They depend on high income tax across the board unlike the US, but also have higher institutional trust/social cohesion (easier with a low pop) and frankly better governance overall.
Culture matters. It's why southern Europe is not like northern.
There's no quick fix that can be cherry picked to make the US like Nordic nations.
students in the us often have to take on a tremendous amount of debt to get one.
You seem not to like the word “Socialist.” I think it’s obvious that we as humans should help each other if one of us is doing not well due to misfortune.
For me a country should be evaluated on how much it cares about the ones that don’t have power (homeless, immigrants, elderly etc.)
There are a hundred variables. Sometimes poor people get lucky. Some are pretty and have doors opened to them. Some truly are exceptional. And many are unlucky.
defen is (correctly) bashing the more educated for not having enough kids, exactly the opposite of the attitude you're imputing to him.
>If we assume educational attainment is correlated with intelligence, and children's intelligence is correlated to parental intelligence, this doesn't bode well for future generations.
I interpret what he was saying, taking in some of what he said earlier, as something along the lines of "less educated people are having more kids, so there are more and more less intelligent children around, so the future is screwed.
Whether or not what he was saying is correct isn't what I'm commenting on here, just clarifying my view.
Also worth noting: according to [1], women who don't finish high school are only about 50% more fertile than women who finish college, and that group represents only 20% of the population. The difference between the high school, some high school, and college cohorts is much smaller.
We also don't know exactly how well that difference in educational attainment is linked to a genetic difference. That is, it seems very likely that some of the difference in attainment is due to family socioeconomic circumstances, not an underlying genetic difference in intellect. As such, I don't think any dysgenic effects are going to be so pronounced as to cause a crisis before genetic engineering efforts can be well under way.
[1]: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/9/education-le...
Isn't the obvious answer better maternity leave laws? Ambitious women in the US don't have kids because it fucks their career. The US is literally last among OECD countries, offering zero guaranteed maternity pay [1].
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/19/news/economy/countries-most...
https://ifstudies.org/blog/measuring-the-long-term-effects-o...
> Within 10 years, comprehensive analyses of the universal, “$5 per day childcare” program, including its impact on child care use, employment patterns, and children’s and parent outcomes, suggested cause for concern. Social development among children, as indicated by both emotional and behavioral measures, had significantly deteriorated in Quebec, relative to the rest of Canada (10% of a standard deviation lower). Comparisons between children ages 2 to 4 who had been exposed to the program, with older children (and siblings) who had not, revealed significant increases in anxiety, hyperactivity, and aggression in those exposed to the program. And the analyses found more hostile, inconsistent parenting, and lower-quality parental relationships among parents of children exposed to the program. But it was hard to predict whether the negative outcomes identified for 2- to 4-year-olds would persist across their development, or simply dissipate.
> Their research confirmed that the negative effects did continue, and in some cases became stronger across development. Among 5 to 9-year-olds, negative social-emotional outcomes not only persisted, but in some cases increased, as indicated by 24% of a standard deviation increase in anxiety, a 19% increase in aggression, and a 13% in hyperactivity. The impact on boys and children with the most elevated behavioral problems was stronger, especially in measures of hyperactivity and aggression.
If you take 9 months off to raise a child, you're not growing your career -- regardless of wether your company or the state or a combination compensates you.
The answer is to have less competitive environments. In Sweden, jantelagen (a cultural sentiment that discourages overt personal ambition) is a huge part of what enables generous leave policies.
Makes me question whether or not our (USians) shouldn’t push for a cultural change where we don’t worship so heavily at the alter of the hyperambitious.
I don't think these examples make your point.
The best hope is improving remote work and improving transportation infrastructure. Women don't have to leave jobs that they can do from home, and client visits are less impactful when they take less time to visit the client and return. It's not a solution which fits nicely into a single bill of legislation to be passed, but it's the groundwork that the US needs to make it happen.
Sadly, biology disagrees.
That aside, the original thread was that those who delay children have fewer children and the conclusion is this situation selects against the things that lead to delaying children. If career ambition is genetic, then each generation will have less of it. At least, that's the theory here.
* Mothers are protected from firing once they announce the pregnancy. There are still stupid people which fire them and put pressure on them. A friend's boss threw a fit because several of his employees got pregnant and actually said he won't hire women any more. That was likely just blowing off steam, but still.
* The mother can take 12 or 24 months off, but gets the same amount in both cases. The pay is capped at 1800 EUR / month, so if she earns well she'll lose a ton of money.
* The time off can be shared between parents, but all my acquaintances decided that the father should only take a couple of months off, in order not to lose even more money and affect the careers of both parents.
Family doesn't seem to be compatible with the hyper-competitive job market.
Uh, I haven't had to use it but from what my siblings told me it's always a massive pay cut. You supposedly get 60% of your normal wage... Capped to 1800€
Nothing helps a woman reenter the work force better than a husband who can take some time off to take care of the toddler.
Reestablishment of traditional family structures where grand parents pitch in as free day care may also have a large positive effect.
Without maternity leave, of course there is a disincentive to have any children. Once you do have a child though, you might as well have a bunch of children. You've already blown the career. This probably explains the odd result of countries with more maternity leave having fewer kids.
Another factor may be that the cost of maternity leave is passed on to everybody. Depending on legal details this may be via higher taxes, lower pay, and higher prices. It obviously isn't free. People often react to higher costs by having fewer kids. The policy may thus have the opposite of the intended effect.
Paternity leave is really important - some of which should be "must take" as much as a woman "must take" time and the rest can be taken by either parent or both parents can work less than full time. IIRC, paternity leave means women are discriminated against less for taking maternity leave.
But it is more than that. Making sure parents can take time off work when their child is sick or they have a meeting with the teacher and things like that are very important. Health care and so on? Important.
I'm guessing that where the paid leave comes from is really important as well: It seems that most of this should simply be taxpayer funded so it doesn't actually break a small business. The US medical leave laws exclude small businesses, so these folks can just fire you and besides, there is nothing saying you get paid time off at all.
There are probably other things that contribute as well.
It hasn't impacted any generations thus far. Low income and/or poorly educated Americans have always had more children than higher income/well educated Americans. From back when health standards were terrible, to when having more kids meant more hands to work the farm. Yet society still has found a way not to collapse on itself.
But is this Universally true? 250 years of US history is a blip in Human history.
You could argue that lower classes used to have a lot of children because child mortality rate and morbility rate was very high. Also children were needed as labour, with a role in the household or working along side their mother or father. With modern healthcare, social security, and children rights legislation none of the previous pattern is true.
In comparison higher income people or more accurately land owning ruling class had the luxary of better nutrition and several children were a way of reducing the risk of having no heir to handover to.
Another fundamental difference for higher income families introduced with Christianity is that the ruling class was now (officially) restricted to a single wife. In comparison if you look at several empiries in Asia and Africa, the biggest benefit of power and wealth (from a patriarch perspective) was the ability to 'acquire' multiple wifes and to maximise your genetic descent, the most brutal example of this was probably Genghis Khan.
The point I wanted to make is that having several (surviving) children used to be a privilege reserved for the rich and powerful of whatever society at the time. However with our science/social/legal achievements and progress this is no longer true in our social fabric and I am unsure we can accurately predict how this 'recent' change will impact humans as a whole.
I would have thought that it's a pretty well known thing nowadays that motherhood is at least a part-time job and in spite of the best intentions, fathers can only partly compensate for the additional effort. Furthermore, being a mother is not a respected "job", it's neither associated with a good salary, nor high status.
But perhaps you've connected with other humans or live in a different country. Would be nice to share those experiences instead of acting uppity.
Take a look at the second section for 1995-2010 changes: https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/lets-not-p...
Yes, the less educated still have more children than the more educated, but that gap is getting smaller.
----------
In more current data:
Teenage pregnancies are down by 55% since 2007, which is an enormous public health success that no one seems to have noticed.
And while I can't find more recent data by educational attainment, there does appear to be racial data, which given the enormous differences in average educational attainment between racial groups, are something you can make inferences from.
The groups which are statistically lower educational attainment have seen 2-6x larger drops in fertility than the groups which are statistically higher educational attainment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/us/fertility-rate-decline... (last sections for figures).
> educational attainment is correlated with intelligence, and children's intelligence is correlated to parental intelligence
For this we have no evidence. Quite the opposite in fact -- not that this should stop anyone from enjoying a hilarious movie :)
(Just keep in mind that Idiocracy is fictional)
Only one form is needed to refute the claim that we "have no evidence, quite the opposite" that children's intelligence is correlated to parental intelligence.
> If we assume educational attainment is correlated with intelligence, and children's intelligence is correlated to parental intelligence, [...]
You could imagine how this idea can discourage people of modest origins, and can also encourage people of advantage to see themselves as innately superior.
Raising kids after 15 years of extra life experience, savings, and career advancement sure does make having kids easy. It was pretty straightforward in my experience but I couldn’t imagine how I would have pulled it off back when I was trying to scrape together some savings with my entry level job and tiny studio apartment.
Having kids early is problematic because of the changing economic factors: job uncertainty combined with families moving for jobs and not being able to rely on grandparents for help. But the 20s are the perfect biological age range to have kids in.
Beyond that, even assuming the official numbers are right, I was still happy to exchange “lose one lottery draw when it counts” for an extra 15 years of doing thing you can’t do after having kids. (And of course being able to afford having them comfortably.)
According to Uhl's Obstetrics and Gynaecology for example, fertility is impacted negatively for females of age > 35 and a first pregnancy over 35 or under 19 is considered a risky pregnancy. Same goes for subsequent pregnancies over 40, which have a higher risk of genetic defect, placenta insufficiency, etc.
It's perhaps interesting to note that a genetic consultation is offered to women over 35, but only to men over 50. The risk of a trisomy over 35 is 1 : 370, whereas earlier it's in the thousands and can be shrunk further through non-invasive diagnosis. There are many more things which become problematic over 35 (thrombosis, diabetes, hypertensive disorders), I don't have time to list them all, but any good book on obstetrics will have the details.
Weight issues (BMI > 25, < 19) and a sedentary lifestyle increase the risk for pre-eclampsia, pre-term birth, pregnancy diabetes or spontaneous abortion. This would explain why the lady you mentioned was likely closely monitored. It seems that some attributes of the mother (e.g. being overweight, diabetes) are also reflected in the later predisposition to disease of the child. This can include even things like natural vs. C-section birth.
I actually find the concept rather odd to use domestically, because it's generally used to show a contrast between a country paying for your college education, and then you reaping the benefits in a different, richer country -- which can seem unfair.
But in the US, students 1) generally pay for their own college education, and 2) often go to college in a state different from where they grew up and different from where they'll settle down later. So it doesn't seem to have any "unfair" aspect.
I mean, complaining about brain drain domestically feels like complaining about free trade domestically... it doesn't make sense to me. People have the freedom to move to areas of better economic opportunity and that's a good thing in a dynamic, ever-changing country like America. Complaining about brain drain domestically really just sounds like wishing more people lived in the country instead of in big cities... no thanks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight#United_St...
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/21/report-asks-w...
And you have some pretty good schools to choose from here: University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State (which has improved a lot in the past 10 years).
There are plenty of fair criticisms that can be leveled against the HOPE scholarship, but it seemed clear to me that it would reduce brain drain in the state, simply because students could get a high quality education at almost no cost. But these data show that the drain ratio increased from 1990 to 2010.
So this is a situation where students aren't paying for their education, are going to school in the state where they likely grew up, and then are still leaving.
This was me. I grew up in Georgia and went to Georgia Tech on the HOPE scholarship, but there just aren't many tech jobs in the area (despite the fact that GT has one of the top ranked CS programs). I moved to the Bay Area a year ago. If Georgia would incentivize the tech industry like it has with filmmaking recently, I bet a lot more people would stay.
Let's say that hypothetically all new science and engineering jobs are all in ScienceVille. In that case, any local government that doesn't receive some direct tax benefit from taxes collected in SV has negative incentive to teach their students anything about Science, since those students will just leave (after their education has been invested in by the local government) and move to SV to get a job. Those local government are now incentivized to teach their kids anything else (like religion and manual labor) since even if they can only do manual labor at least they're going to stay in their hometown.
Now there is a difference of incentives for the individual States verses the Nation. The Nation would prefer to have lots more engineers and skilled tech workers. The States would prefer to keep their best and their brightest, and if that means they are underutilized that's still a local maximum for the individual State.
Naturally, this is great for SV, but horrible for the rest of the nation. In this scenario, the entirely imaginary, hypothetical "SV" has to either give something back to incentivize the rest of the nation to keep teaching Science and Engineering, or the rest of the country continually subsidizes SV through education which is unsustainable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hometown_tax
Its implementation is flawed though, citizens can freely pick any city even if they have no relation to it, and cities are allowed to give gifts to citizens who choose the city, resulting in cities competing to offer the best kickbacks.
In terms of skills I could learn on the job, there's no way I could have gone nearly as far in my career if I limited myself to the set of employers that were available to me in my hometown.
Now, I've moved to a red state, (for family reasons), and I have interviewed at about 20 different companies. The "tech industry" is very different from California. There's a little bit of a software startup industry growing, most of the jobs are in healthcare and financial IT. Nobody wants to pay people what they could earn elsewhere. And in terms of career paths there's not a lot out there that offers much of a future. (or at least it appears that way). None of these companies seem like they have any kind of vision other than general business continuity. It's a completely different experience than I had interviewing with tech companies in California.
Even worse: the company I did take a job at can't seem to retain talent. And when we look for it, we can't find it. (And when we find it - I implore them to make it worth the candidate's time. . . and HR simply responds about what the "market rate" is. - which is why I keep interviewing elsewhere. . . ).
In a nutshell; the main difference seems to be - technology companies in California are in the business to innovate, and create new technology, and to become industry leaders. Where, in my new state; they're in the business to just be in business.
This exists in the Valley too. IBM, Oracle, Cisco, many businesses once they reach a certain maturity point just turn into “steady” parts of the market.
"It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time."
This was framed as an inspirational moment that finally pushed Will to achieve his potential. This idea -- that self-actualization requires abandoning your small-town roots -- is ingrained in our cultural DNA.
She was right. I did, right to the Bay Area. When I go back and visit, the area has gotten more economically depressed, and frankly more stereotypical. And to put a cherry on top, I am completely unemployable there.
Don’t believe me? Check this out: Chinese students got beaten down by university securities, for protesting against fake degrees given to them. Happened today https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/bhxgng/chinas_studen...
The most qualified people around me on previous jobs moved to US, Europe or are working remotely (myself included).
It's sad because it increases the difficulty of local companies to grow a good team, continuing the cycle.
>It’s the competitive advantage of being a nation bound by ideas and common purpose than a monarch or ethnicity or religion.
I think the US has become very ossified in this belief (which people fool themselves that the nature of this belief is any different from any other belief), you can see global capital flight to (parts of) the US and brain drain into the US, but in market speak, its a crowded trade, driven out of fear of the current downsides and not future upsides. However the nature of crowded trades is that they have the most tail risk, that some people (like me) cannot stomach.
I'm of the mind that things will get more complicated soon within the next year (well at least for those who have been oblivious all along despite the warning signs), and that people will start to realize that value can be found anywhere if those are willing to seek it out, though it may not be as simple as what we are used to and have come to expect.
People from my hometown (pop. ~7500 in Midwest), do not realize that they are falling behind at an almost exponential rate. Many are working jobs that require common training, they do not continue their education, and they spend far too much time behind screens in the form of entertainment. And, even for those who want to continue to learn, they do not have access to a nearby tech meeting hosted by a top firm speaking on the state of the art. If you're not in SF or NY, then you do miss out on a lot of opportunities per people and shared information.
* I am personally ashamed to say that I only realized the power and advantage of networking in recent years.
> People from my hometown (pop. ~7500 in Midwest), do not realize that they are falling behind at an almost exponential rate. Many are working jobs that require common training, they do not continue their education
Do you think it's caused by the lack of other people who are moving ahead aka role models or are there other factors(quality education etc...)?
I do feel and have seen despite being in the right place some people don't get same opportunities for upward mobility despite being literally next door.
But most people working in the tech industry; (which is very highly stovepiped) - will never experience that, and may only read about it.
When you're not fortunate enough to be employed in one of the top tech industry companies, or in one of the hotspots where the industry is focused (Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, Austin, Virginia, maybe Provo, Seattle) - then you have to do all you can to use the internet to constantly learn and grow your skills; but also, you have to try to constantly evangelize the same attitude to your co-workers, and management. It is an exhausting job.
1. GF/now wife had advanced degrees, and there were no advanced opportunities for her in my area. She'd also have to leave the great opportunity she had in her big northern city.
2. The industry was randomly down when I graduated, so it didn't even make much sense to stay even without my wife's situation. I found a job in my wife's city where we're producing lots of tax income for one of the big gainers on this map.
I think a key lesson from my case is to not have the local economy dependent on one industry. The Gulf Coast is married to oil/chemicals, the Midwest was in heavy manufacturing, WV in coal. A more diverse local economy means all the married, educated couples can have an easier time finding careers for themselves without one side having to sacrifice and feel like they've wasted their huge educational investments.
But I find the choices of units for these statistics to be very odd. For example, I look at Massachusetts Net difference in Absolute terms in 2017 (where stars indicate an option on the graph) and I see -16.41.
The article doesn't seem to say directly what -16.41 is, other than that it's the "excess of highly-educated share of movers over highly-educated share of entrants". So what is it?
Looking at the data they provide, I believe that they are subtracting two different percentages of two separate numbers. It appears they examine all the people who left and take the percentage of highly educated people in that group (call this X); and they examine all the people who entered the state and take the percentage of highly educated people (call this Y); and they return X - Y.
This appears to me to be a terrible statistic in practice, especially if the population of a state is either growing or shrinking.
For an example of an unbelievably misleading scenario, consider the fictional state Hackernewsyork, with a population of 100 people (30 of whom are highly educated). Say Hackernewsyork had exactly 1 person move away and she was highly educated (so X = 100) and 10 people move in but only 5 were highly educated (so Y = 50). Then they would report that X - Y = 50, a sign of massive brain drain per the article --- when in fact both the number of highly educated people in the state and the percentage of people in the state who are highly educated went up.
Obviously, it would be better to use net numbers (arrivals of highly educated – departures of highly educated) and not attempt to normalise the numbers.
It would be nice to think of this as just another data-fetish bauble, but this article is part of a complex multi-dimensional game of politics. Who stands to gain? What senators sit on the majority of the Joint Economic Committee and why would they be selflessly taking their own states down a peg? Woe is the drain... of their own making perhaps?
Maybe there is some major upcoming decision, say, one by the Supreme Court, that will greatly effect how many, many billions of education dollars will be dispersed by the federal government and to what "accredited" educational institutions will be newly eligible for it?
"The Roots of the New Urban Crisis"
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/04/the-roots-of-the-new-...
"Why America’s Richest Cities Keep Getting Richer"
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/richard...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
the lowest EU member is Bulgaria (1475), the highest is Luxembourg (3843); that's a factor 2.6.
The EU also has much larger cultural barriers to movement than the US (different languages, just to mention the most obvious one).
I very much question the validity of PPP in this case. Things are no doubt cheaper in Bulgaria, but I'm fairly certain that electronics, cars etc are going to cost roughly the same, because there's a free flow of goods. People just make do with less.
Also keep in mind that people might move abroad to work there, but still come back home once in a while. The effect on the economy is still going to be similar. The median equivalised net income is just too different inside the EU: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=ilc_...
German is also widely taught in Eastern European schools, so the language barrier isn’t as high as Americans think it is.
(Sample: Romanians, Poles and Croatians I know through work)
I stayed in Boston after CS-ish grad school, but pretty much all the other students left immediately/shortly after finishing. If they didn't go to professorships (the minority), it was usually SF or NYC.
The reasons, besides job opportunities, were young nightlife (e.g., dating pool are frumpy nerds, bars/clubs/restaurants close up early by big city standards, subway stops before last call), and quality of life for cost of living (young STEM/med/law new-grads who want to be in-town often pay out the nose to rent with roommates in a run-down old tinderbox apartment with lead paint that was built 100 years ago as cheap housing for poor people), and weather. And, thinking forward a couple years, a house/apartment big&nice enough to start a family is outside the means of most people.
NYC is full of tinder box apartments. The dating pool in SF is way more lopsided than the east coast. Uber made the subway thing less relevant (though as someone who moved here and got older, the late hours also mean less to me now than earlier)
Also MA is allegedly top ranked for millennials https://boston.cbslocal.com/2019/04/09/best-states-millennia...
Homes are expensive in MA but not cheaper in either SF or NY.
Boston also one of three US cities outside SV expected to be top 10 globally in tech for the foreseeable future https://boston.curbed.com/2019/2/26/18240310/boston-technolo...
As for families, I don't see how either NY or CA is better off for education.
There's plenty of reasons to leave Boston for either of those cities, but the ones you cite really don't make a whole lot of sense.
And different people have different ideas of what a “nice” place is to live.
Education is only one factor, there are many others.
FYI - 'Worker mobility' in the US is actually declining, and has been for some time.
This could possibly mean that regular workers are moving around less, relative to educated one's.
It also could mean as communications and transportation become easier, the 'big city' advantages are just compounding.
So the major metro areas are just sucking up everything around them.
Texas, Colorado, Illinois have a sea of purple around them.
I'm not saying that applies to everyone. I was "brain-drained" despite those things. But I know others who couldn't just pick up their lives for a job on the other side of the country.
The notion that 'you could feasibly make more money elsewhere, and therefore should leave' is not obvious to me, or I think to most people.
Chicago may have more opportunity than Michigan overall, but that doesn't mean there are not great opportunities in Michigan. But that's within the context of your imperative.
The real answer is that for most people, their job is not the defining artifact of their life, it's a means to support their families, and maybe give them an opportunity to engage with their communities, have hobbies, friends.
I think for young people, in their 20's the notion is a little big different, because moving is exploring and liberating in some ways, but that's only one phase of life.
Just because there are some great opportunities in Michigan does not mean there are enough great opportunities in Michigan for everyone who could find one in Chicago, SF, or Seattle, or NYC.
https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/population-loss-in-illi...
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/study-illinois-home-to-highes...
Source: grew up in NJ and lives in MA
Industrial decline accellerated hugely in the 1970s.
1. The terms and implications are still confusing me, but the effect remains: the former CSA states scored positively 1940-1970 and in cases later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_%28African_Ame...
And it would be helpful if the commentary on Murray's thoughts exceeded the meta-commentary on mentioning Murray's name.
Maybe edit or reframe your comment.
He also strongly argues that your ability to succeed is a measure of your innate intelligence. (perhaps this is the part that user/yasp thought would be considered abhorrent?) and that combines with the earlier parts to say that there will be increased stratification and it will be on intelligence as well as on money.
This whole thing is a waste of time because I gained nothing novel from having chased this vague-ass comment. Ugh.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10...
Compare that to the Net figures from 1940 through 1990, which show a clear migration to the Southern states. But I'm not even sure this is showing what it suggests. Is it simply a proxy for population growth?
Or is this thing just a symptom that people in general have a much lower chance of staying in the same state for 31-40 years?
I find the notion that people "self-select" into like-minded communities as some sort of "social segregation" baseless, even laughable. The South still has the echoes of slavery and (real) segregation that many have sought to escape. The implication here is that people are abandoning their communities. Are they though? What do they owe these states where they grew up? And are they abandoning such states or essentially being chased away because they simply don't conform to whatever cultural or religious norms dominate there? This seems particular relevant to the smaller and more rural states.
Bear in mind that education seems to be a partial antidote to religious dogma [1] in that people with more education tend to express religion less (although this is complicated and Christians seem to somewhat buck this trend). But given the cultural importance of religion in some communities, it seems like your more educated citizens are also more likely to leave, no?
19th century America was one of small, rural towns. With the railroad and homesteading these spread West. What probably began with the Industrial Revolution seemed to turn into a tidal wave of urbanization following the Second World War. Cities are just more efficient at delivering work opportunities.
[1] https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-edu...
States which retain and attract highly-educated adults stand to reap substantial economic benefits. At the same time, those that bleed much of their homegrown talent will see their economic fortunes decline if they fail to replace the leavers with highly-educated out-of-staters. Yet even if they do manage to offset their losses, these states are still losing a vital source of social capital.
What is more, the outmigration of highly-educated adults has almost certainly played a role in the deterioration of civil society in struggling communities across the country. And to the extent that the geographic mobility of the highly-educated has increased social bifurcation, it has likely exacerbated distrust of and intolerance toward people who hold different beliefs. One need only glance at today’s polarized political environment to see these attitudes on display.
Our research finds that states that are doing the best—low gross brain drain and net brain gain—generally cluster along the Boston-Washington corridor and on the West Coast: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, California, Oregon, and Washington. Other brain gain states are regional hubs—Hawaii, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Illinois. Several of these states experienced high gross brain drain and net brain drain in 1970, but have reversed course; others have seen continued good prospects or improvements on one or both measures. For the most part, these states are home to what Richard Florida would describe as “winner-take-all cities.”
On the other hand, states in the Southeast, in the Rust Belt, and in other parts of the country tend to fare much worse when it comes to retaining and attracting the highly-educated. Several states in the Southeast—West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—had low gross brain drain and net brain gain in 1970, but today generally experience high gross brain drain as well as net brain drain. Most Rust Belt states—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri—have done poorly on these measures in both 1970 and 2017. Perhaps unsurprisingly, states that defy these regional trends (for example, Illinois in the Rust Belt, and Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia in the Southeast) seem to be attracting highly-educated out-of-staters to their dynamic metropolitan hubs.
Brain drain has significant consequences—economic, yes, but also political and cultural. By increasing social segregation, it limits opportunities for disparate groups to connect. And by siphoning a source of economic innovation from emptying communities, brain drain can also lead to crumbling institutions of civil society. As those natives who have more resources leave, those left behind may struggle to support churches, police athletic leagues, parent-teacher associations, and local businesses. State and local policymakers are understandably focused on the economic consequences of brain drain. But anyone concerned about the health of associational life in America should worry that what this report has mapped out, to some extent, is the geography of social capital drain.
Huh... churches are the first thing that come to mind. Yep, this was definitely written by a Utah senate staff.
I don't even go to church or have a shotgun, but I suddenly wanted to live there and be a part of that community. I guess you could say that that sort of genuine community made me envious.
Community masters, one of the reasons that SLC has the highest income mobility in the country
Brain-drain may be for economic, technological, social, and cultural reasons. It's not uncommon for talent flows to be at least nominally bidirectional, though with different and distinct motivating factors. The flight of intellectual (and especially Jewish) European talent to the US before, during, and after WWII contrasts with black American's migration from the US, particularly though not just the South, to Europe. Contrast Fermi and Einstein against James Baldwin and Nina Simone. Both oppression (negative driver) and economic opportunity (positive) existed for each.
Within the British Commonwealth, substantial migratoon supported by some cultural and political commonality (even where other strong differences existed) facilitated vast human flows, generlly toward London, thpugh also other centres.
Similar dynamics exist within countries as well, often (per Jane Jacobs) at the urban regional level, particularly contrasted with rural regions. And hub formation / centres of excellence tend to accelerate such consolidation (a point Edward Glaeser argues relatively well, though with flaws).
Economic goods tend to move toward reward, and away from punishment or restraint, though the dynamic once in flow tends to be self-sustaining, at least for a time. There's much focus on positive network effects and growth, less on decline. But the immigration surces of migration toward first the U.S. Atlantic seaboard, and later the Western US, came from what had been earlier. priods' dynamic hubs. Why those declined should be instructive study.
You want the other side of the state, near the middle of Brevard county. It's a bunch of engineers working for DoD and NASA contractors.
I been brain drained by being offered higher pay.
You want to stop brain drain?
PAY!
Solved.
Which means decision makers or ultimately state/federal government think that funding of certain things at certain geographies is not important. (Or alternatively not offering any stimulus such as reducing taxes).
Article misleads reader by claiming "what is" without explaining the driving force behind the dynamics of skilled market.
There are lots of companies doing exactly this and driving costs lower in areas where they can get away with it. I think a non-trivial amount of brain-drain is simply paying people what they are worth regardless of how nuanced the issue actually is.
It's why companies prefer hiring people with more education.
That said, I think many roles should not require a college degree for application.
That one single thing might make a big difference - because as you hint there are tons of otherwise great people who don't specifically have the education.
I deal with “highly educated” people in the mental health field on a daily basis and some can barely write grammatically correct sentences: the support tickets I get from people with PhDs and MA mental health professionals are frequently atrocious. But my “uneducated” dad worked as a precision machinist for NASA projects as well as teaching graduate students metallurgy. He’s considered not highly educated, but only because he didn’t get a degree. His education has zero to do with intelligence. That story isn’t an outlier either. My point is that higher education attainment often has nothing to do with intelligence beyond a base level, but more of class, financial resources and desire. A naval fighter pilot with a bachelors degree, in my experience is far more “educated” than someone with a masters in education, sociology, poetry or whatever. Highly educated as a proxy for “desirable worker” is a folly. Ambition, drive and work ethic are more valuable to a society than simply someone who checked the boxes and got a university degree. Using a university degree as a proxy for “desirable” worker is just snobbery and intellectually lazy.
That doesn't mean there are not quite intelligent people who don't have a college degree, or that some kinds of specialized people are true artisans.