Brad Wilcox and Lyman Stone challenge media narratives about the benefits of progressive state-level policies.
You would think that Minnesota is a mecca for families, judging by the adulatory press coverage that Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s family policy record in the state has received from liberal professors and pundits. Celebrating the vice presidential nominee’s moves to expand the child tax credit for poor families, advance paid family leave, and provide universal school lunch in the state, Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell wrote these family policies provide “further evidence that one major party cares about children and families; and the other does not.” She added: “Democrats should adopt a new agenda: Make America Minnesota Already” (MAMA). And fair’s fair: Gov. Walz did implement some policies that we think helped Minnesota families.
But Rampell might be surprised to learn that Minnesota isn’t a magnet for families with children: quite the opposite, in fact. Although a number of Minnesota’s progressive family policies are popular in polls of parents, when it comes to family policy, broadly understood, the revealed preferences of parents often diverge from their stated preferences for parts of the “MAMA”-state agenda. More families with children moved out of Minnesota in 2021 and 2022 than moved into the state, according to our analysis of the American Community Survey. In fact, Minnesota ranked in the worst third for family migration, as one of 18 states in the nation that saw more families leave than move into the state.
Minnesota is no outlier. Parents are not generally moving towards states with the preferred family policies of progressives. They are moving out of these states, including Democratic states, like New York, California, Massachusetts, and Oregon, all well known for their liberal family policies. Blue states that voted for Democratic presidential candidates in both 2016 and 2020 lost 213,000 families with children in 2021 and 2022 (a 0.7% net decline), while red states that voted for President Trump in both elections gained 181,000 families (a 0.6% net gain).
