I wanted to find a map of American migration or movement of some sort for this weeks blog post, and I found this fun interactive map of American migration on the Forbes website. This map is based in IRS data and is used in this website to show the way that American migration hinges upon changes in the economy of certain regions.
Four "experts" from Forbes analyzed this data in different essays. I found this one to be particularly interesting. This writer states that regions that thrive are counter-intuitively ones that have the most people leaving, as they constantly have to "re-sort and react adaptively, almost biologically". Likewise, he says that the most troubling places are those like West Virginia that have no traffic in or out. He says "What we are seeing is the population equivalent of an organism consuming itself."
While I'm not very familiar with economic concepts, I found the language in this essay particularly interesting, as the writer explicated this quantitative data in a way that made regions and economies seem like living organisms, that are doomed if they keep to themselves. Why would it matter if this location has a strong, sufficient economy situated within themselves? Regardless, the interactive map is fun to play around with and probably of more interest to you all than the analyst essays!
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