More Migration Analysis

I'm finding the migration variables fascinating. These questions are a part of the long form and can be found in Summary File 3 on the Census website. For the maps in the screenshots below, I used the Population 5 years and over: Different house in 1995; In United States in 1995; Different county; Different state; ... variables. The variables allow the identification of where people are moving from, which is quite interesting. The variables are broken up into 4 regions: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. What I have mapped is the number of people (over the age of 5) who have moved from a state in a particular region to another state (which may also be in that region). For example, in the Northeast map, if a person lived in Maine and moved to Arizona (the map below will show this appears to be quite a popular destination for New Englanders), they would be counted in the county they moved to in Arizona. If a person lived in Maine and moved to Vermont, they would be counted in the county they moved to in Vermont.

This data is broken up by county and the more red and taller a county, the more people that moved there. The heights are quite exaggerated: each person adds 10 meters of height to the county. These maps show how the linear color scale I've been employing to date only really work on datasets that have quite small ranges. I am working on a logarithmic scaling technique that should help on these sorts of datasets, where there may be a smaller number of values that may distort the distribution of values.

Also, I realize it might not have been intuitive: you can click on the pictures for a much larger version of the image. This is true for all of the pictures on the blog.

Northeast: New Englanders appear to be moving to Florida, Arizona, and California in droves. Chicago & Seattle get a fair number as well.


Midwest: Midwesterners are more focused on Arizona than California and quite drawn to Chicago.


South: Southeners appear to be moving all over including California, Arizona, Georgia , Texas, North Carolina, and DC.


West: Westerners shun moving to the Midwest, South, or East, favoring consolidation in Las Vegas (yes, the more northern red spike is Vegas) and Phoenix. You can see some movements to Hawaii & Alaska in the distance.