New story today in the Silicon Valley Business Journal. The gist is that there is not a huge exodus and the wealth is staying here. Here were my highlights:
Millionaires like it here: The most satisfied Californians, when it comes to the direction of the state and belief that things will get better, are its most affluent ones, according to the UC San Diego study. That finding was reinforced by a separate but related study from Stanford and Cornell universities, which looked at the migration patterns of California’s millionaires based on nearly two decades of data from the Franchise Tax Board. Their study found no flight of such affluent people in spite of the multiple tax increases the state has levied on high-income earners over the last 10 years.
Tracking credit histories: In another study, the UC California Policy Lab examined 16 years of credit history going through 2020. It found "no evidence of a pronounced exodus from the state" and "little evidence that wealthy Californians are leaving en masse." It did, however, find a net migration out of San Francisco during the pandemic and a drop in the number of people moving into California.
Not going far: About two-thirds of those who left San Francisco last year stayed in the 11-county Bay Area economic region, according to the same California Policy Lab study. About 80% stayed in California. Those trends were consistent with prior years, according to the study. Among people who did leave the state, young people were most likely to head to Texas or Washington state, while the top destinations of older residents were Arizona and Nevada, according to a study from UCLA
