Go East, Young Man!

Could be the weather, or the prospect of having Arnold Schwarzenegger as the state's "Governator," but for some reason, the once booming state of California is losing many of its residents to nearby Nevada and Arizona.

According to new Census 2000 reports, Nevada and Arizona had the highest rates of net inmigration from other states between 1995 and 2000 and many of their new residents came from California.

In census-speak, "inmigration" means people moving in from other places, while "outmigration" means people leaving for greener pastures.

Nevada easily led all states with the highest rate of net inmigration between 1995 and 2000, gaining 151.5 people for every 1,000 residents. Besides Nevada and Arizona (which gained 74.3 migrants per 1,000), other states with high levels of net inmigration were Georgia (48.6), North Carolina (48.4), Florida (44.0) and Colorado (43.8).

States that saw the greatest rate of departing (outmigrating) citizens included the District of Columbia (which lost 81.7 people per 1,000 residents), Hawaii (65.4), Alaska (51.0), New York (48.8) and North Dakota (40.6).

Other interesting details from the new census reports included:

Many of the inmigrants to Nevada, Arizona and other fast-growing states were came California, which had a net outmigration of 755,000 people to other states between 1995 and 2000 second only to New York, which had a net outmigration of 874,000.

The migration of 300,000 people from New York to Florida was the single largest state-to-state flow, and was far larger than the reverse flow of 70,000 people from Florida to New York.

Many of the people migrating to fast-growing Georgia were from Florida.

The four Census Bureau reports referenced in this article are:

Domestic Migration Across Regions, Divisions, and States: 1995 to 2000

State-to-State Migration Flows: 1995 to 2000

Migration and Geographic Mobility in Metropolitan and Non-metropolitan America: 1995 to 2000

Internal Migration of the Older Population: 1995 to 2000

Estimates in all four reports are based on responses from a sample of the population. As with all surveys, these estimates may vary from the actual values because of sampling variation or other factors. [Source: U.S. Census Bureau]