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Fact check: Which democratic states have seen the highest rates of emigration in recent years?
Executive Summary
The strongest, consistent evidence in the supplied materials shows that several large U.S. Democratic-governed states — notably New York and California — have experienced some of the highest recent emigration losses, driven primarily by domestic out-migration for affordability and housing reasons; long-run figures since 2000 show New York and California among the largest net domestic migration losers [1] [2] [3]. Outside the United States, smaller democracies such as Estonia have recorded notable negative migration balances and high emigration rates in 2024–2025, influenced by demographic trends and flows of non-citizen populations [4] [5]. The available analyses link cost of living and housing affordability as recurring drivers in multiple contexts [6] [3], while survey evidence flags economic opportunity as a major push factor in places like Romania [7].
1. Big-ticket U.S. losses: Why New York and California top the list
Two independent analyses present New York and California as the largest recent out-migration performers in the U.S., with short-term losses measured in the tens of thousands and multi-decade net domestic migration deficits of millions since 2000. The 2025 reporting quantifies recent state losses — New York ~102,000, California ~75,000 in the most recent period cited — while a separate dataset tallies 4.0 million New Yorkers and 3.8 million Californians leaving since 2000 [1] [2]. Those sources emphasize domestic moves to lower-cost Sun Belt destinations such as Texas and Florida and highlight acute housing affordability crises — Manhattan rents near $5,000 and vacancy rates at historic lows are cited as immediate pressure points — that appear to fuel the pattern [3]. The combination of short-term spikes and decade-long net outflows positions these Democratic states as prominent examples of high emigration within established democracies [1] [2] [3].
2. Illinois and other Democratic states: mid-sized losses and local context
Illinois is repeatedly named among Democratic-governed states registering notable population declines, with cited losses (for the referenced period) around 33,000 residents; reporting frames Illinois’ outflow as part of a broader Midwest-to-Sunbelt shift and points to fiscal, economic, and quality-of-life drivers alongside housing costs [1]. The supplied news inventory for Illinois and other Democratic states contains substantial local reporting but little centralized, comparable migration statistics beyond these headline figures [8] [9] [10]. The available texts compel caution: state-level politics or party labels aren’t primary causal variables in the supplied analyses; rather, structural economic conditions, taxation, housing supply, and employment opportunities are emphasized as the proximate causes for residents choosing to leave [1] [2].
3. Small democracies showing high emigration rates: the Baltic example
Estonia’s official statistics and reporting show a tangible reversal in 2024–2025: the migration balance for Estonian citizens turned negative, with more citizens leaving than arriving for the first time since 2020, and an overall emigration surge pushing rates to the highest in a decade [4] [5]. Estonia’s population decline to 1,369,995 as of January 1, 2025, is attributed to a negative natural increase combined with insufficient net migration, and reporting connects elevated emigration to both citizen mobility and transient flows tied to regional dynamics [11]. These Baltic figures demonstrate that smaller democracies with constrained populations can register high proportional emigration, even where absolute numbers are lower than U.S. state outflows, underscoring the demographic vulnerability of small countries [4] [11].
4. Drivers repeated across contexts: affordability, opportunity, and demography
Across the supplied analyses, the most consistently cited drivers of emigration are housing affordability and economic opportunity. U.S. state reporting links exodus from New York and California to untenable housing costs and vacancy shortages [3] [6]. European reporting and surveys point to young people’s inclination to emigrate for better pay and careers (Romanian survey showing 70% of youth considering moving abroad), and national statistics in Estonia underline demographic decline and fluctuating migrant cohorts as determinants of net losses [7] [5]. The sources collectively indicate that policy interventions (zoning, housing supply, tax/fiscal measures) are being discussed or implemented, but the materials do not provide comprehensive causal evaluations or long-term effectiveness assessments [3] [6].
5. What the supplied evidence omits and the implications for interpretation
The dataset lacks standardized, directly comparable emigration rates across all democratic states and omits recent, granular origin–destination microdata needed to parse international versus domestic components, demographic subgroups, and return migration. Several local news sources cover political or social developments without migration metrics (p3_s1–[12], [8]–[10], [13]–p5_s3), and some analyses are survey-based rather than measured outflows [7]. Therefore, while the supplied evidence robustly supports New York, California, and to a lesser extent Illinois as high-emigration U.S. Democratic states and identifies Estonia as a European example of elevated emigration, it does not offer a comprehensive global ranking of democratic states by emigration rates; comparative conclusions beyond these specific, sourced examples would require standardized migration datasets not present among the supplied materials [1] [2] [4].