Do People Actually Move to Freer States? The Migration Data

"Vote with your feet" is one of the oldest ideas in American politics: if you don't like how your state governs, move to one that governs differently. It's a nice theory. But does it actually happen — do Americans really move toward freer states? We paired our 2026 freedom scores with the U.S. Census Bureau's net-migration data for all 50 states to find out. The short answer: yes, clearly — but it's a tendency, not a law, and freedom is tangled up with taxes, housing, and weather in ways the raw correlation can't separate.

The short version

• Across all 50 states, freedom score and net domestic migration are positively correlated (r = 0.53) — freer states tend to gain people.
• The 10 freest states gained an average of +22.7 movers per 1,000 residents; the 10 least-free states lost 14.6 per 1,000.
• The biggest population losers — California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Hawaii — are all bottom-tier on freedom.
• But it's not destiny: North Dakota is free and shrinking, while low-scoring Delaware is one of the fastest-growing states.

The pattern: freer states gain, restrictive states bleed

Between 2020 and 2024, the Census Bureau's estimates show a stark sorting of the American population. Some states pulled in hundreds of thousands of net domestic migrants; others hemorrhaged them. When you line those migration rates up against how each state scores in our 2026 Freedom Index, the relationship is hard to miss.

Correlation: freedom score vs. net migration

r = 0.53Correlation: freedom score vs. net migration

Avg net migration / 1k — 10 freest states

+22.7Avg net migration / 1k — 10 freest states

Avg net migration / 1k — 10 least-free states

−14.6Avg net migration / 1k — 10 least-free states

A correlation of 0.53 is moderate-to-strong for messy real-world social data — it means a state's overall freedom score alone explains roughly 28% of the variation in how fast it gained or lost residents. That's a lot for a single variable, when you consider how many other things drive a move: a job, a partner, family, the cost of a house, the weather. Freedom isn't the only reason people move. But the data says it's clearly one of them.

The cleanest way to see it: split the 50 states at the median freedom score. Of the 26 states above the median, 20 gained domestic migrants. Of the 24 below it, 18 lost them. The country is, slowly and at the margin, sorting itself.

The states gaining the most

The per-capita migration leaders are a near-perfect roll call of the freer half of the index. Idaho, Montana, the Carolinas, Florida, Tennessee, and Arizona all combine above-average freedom scores with some of the largest net inflows in the country (figures are net domestic migration per 1,000 residents, 2020–2024):

State	Freedom rank	Net migration / 1,000
Idaho	#14	+65.4
South Carolina	#29	+61.5
Montana	#3	+49.3
Florida	#9	+40.5
North Carolina	#8	+37.5
Tennessee	#12	+36.5
Arizona	#5	+35.3
Texas	#22	+25.7

The pattern held into 2025: the latest Census data shows North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Arizona again leading the nation in net domestic gains. The destinations barely change year to year — they're structural.

The states losing the most

At the other end, the states shedding people are overwhelmingly clustered at the bottom of the freedom table. Every one of the six largest per-capita losers scores in the bottom dozen of the index:

State	Freedom rank	Net migration / 1,000
New York	#49	−47.8
California	#47	−37.0
Hawaii	#50	−34.9
Illinois	#42	−32.6
Louisiana	#39	−27.8
Massachusetts	#46	−23.1
New Jersey	#45	−20.7

California alone lost a net 1.2 million residents to other states over the period; New York lost nearly a million. These are high-tax, high-regulation, restrictive-firearm states — exactly the profile that lands a state in the index's basement — and they are the same states people are leaving fastest.

Where the pattern breaks

A correlation of 0.53 leaves plenty of room for exceptions, and the exceptions are where it gets interesting — because they're what tell you freedom isn't the whole story.

• North Dakota ranks #4 in the country on freedom but lost about 8 residents per 1,000. A light-touch, low-tax state can still shrink if it's cold, remote, and tied to a boom-and-bust energy economy.
• Delaware is the mirror image: it ranks a lowly #48 on freedom, yet posted one of the largest inflows in the nation (+46.8 per 1,000). No sales tax, retiree-friendly taxation, and a location wedged between major metros pulled people in regardless of its index score.
• Even Utah, the #1 freest state, gained a relatively modest +15.9 per 1,000 — strong, but well behind less-free Delaware. Being the freest state doesn't guarantee a flood when housing is already expensive and the base population is small.

Freedom, or just low taxes and cheap housing?

This is the fair objection, and it deserves a straight answer: a lot of what our index rewards — low taxes, light regulation, permissive land-use — also happens to make a state cheaper to live in. So is migration tracking freedom, or just affordability?

Both, and they're related on purpose. Several of the index's ten categories — economic freedom, regulatory burden, property rights — are partly about the policies that determine cost of living. A state that makes it cheap and easy to build housing scores higher on regulatory and property freedom and ends up more affordable. The freedom and the affordability aren't two separate explanations competing to be the "real" one; for several categories, they're the same policy choices viewed from two angles.

Where they come apart is on the freedoms that aren't about money at all — gun rights, drug policy, criminal justice, speech. Those don't lower your rent, yet states that score well on them still tend to land in the gaining column. That's a hint that the "it's just affordability" story is incomplete.

What it means if you're thinking about moving

If you're weighing a move, the takeaway isn't "pack up for the #1 state." It's that the direction of American migration lines up with the freedom data, which means the places gaining people are, on average, the places expanding the menu of choices available to you — lower taxes, more school options, fewer licensing hurdles, looser carry laws. Whether that bundle is worth leaving family and a job for is a personal call no index can make.

The smarter move is to figure out which specific freedoms you actually care about, since a gun owner, a remote worker chasing low taxes, and a parent who wants school choice will each rank the states differently.

Find your freest state

Rate the ten freedoms by what matters to you and get a personalized 50-state ranking in two minutes.

A note on the data: migration figures are U.S. Census Bureau net domestic migration estimates for 2020–2024, expressed per 1,000 residents; freedom scores reflect the live 2026 index. State freedom profiles are fairly stable year to year, which is what makes comparing a state's current policy regime against its recent migration trend meaningful rather than coincidental.