Residents are more highly educated
So-called “natural increase,” i.e., births outstripping deaths, is not the primary driver of population growth here. No sex, please; we are from Massachusetts. You smirk, but that’s true. Commonwealth residents are more highly educated than the population at large, and intellectuals trend low for birth rates.
Since 2011, over 35,000 men and women have been arriving here each year from overseas; students, relatives of existing residents, and job-seekers. Massachusetts companies request about 15,000 specialty H1-B visas for foreign workers each year. Emigration in that same time has been fairly low, averaging around 10,000.
Where do Bay Staters go? To Florida, for the enticing climate, and to New Hampshire, for cultural richness and diversity. Just kidding, ancestral home of Franklin Pierce and Adam Sandler. Like Florida, New Hampshire has no earned income nor estate taxes. They are great places to bleed down your IRA accounts and die.
Population growth is a heady new experience for us, and reverses a trend. Between 2003 and 2004, Massachusetts was the only state in the union to actually lose population. That didn’t bother me. I felt we were self-selecting for hardiness and intellect: We Happy Few!
“Older, colder, and not always that friendly,” was how outsiders viewed us, according to University of Massachusetts demographer Michael D. Goodman. A decade ago, Goodman bemoaned our “state of decline” on this very page, fretting that “Massachusetts is losing people.”