[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone on a Friday. We'll begin today with this really interesting and important new debate that broke out this week based on census data about who's leaving New York State and who's not. Why do we care? With Mayor Adams cutting city services right now, you probably know that's happening, and Adams and Governor Hochul afraid to raise taxes on the wealthiest among us because they might leave. This debate really matters. Here are some of the basics, and then we'll talk to two guests from the Fiscal Policy Institute think tank, who put this on the map this week by drawing everyone's attention to the census figures. The New York Times headline on this, put it succinctly, "New York's millionaire class is growing, other people are leaving."

The Times continues, "The people leaving New York at the fastest rate last year were families making between $32,000 and $65,000. A disproportionately high share of these movers were Black and Hispanic. They were followed by people earning $104,000 to $172,000 a year and above average income in many parts of the country, but a more modest one in New York City." Let's dig in. We'll invite your own stories of moving or thinking of moving out of New York State, and why or why not. 212-433 WNYC. Our phones are open on this right from the start, specifically and especially if you have moved out of New York State just in the last year. Screeners, heads up on this too. We're going to give priority to anyone who's moved out of New York State just in the last year or are thinking of moving out of New York State now. Call and tell us why.

212-433-WNYC. Remember, this is about people leaving for other states. If you move from the city to the New York suburbs, move to Long Island, move to Rockland, that's another show, but if moved out of New York State in the last year or are considering it, tell us why. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. With us now, two guests from the Fiscal Policy Institute, the left-leaning think tank drawing our attention to these census numbers. Emily Eisner, Fiscal Policy Institute, economist, and Andrew Perry, senior policy analyst for the group. Emily and Andrew, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Emily Eisner: Thanks for having us.

Andrew Perry: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having us.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about the high earners first. The marquee number here is that New York State has more millionaires living here today than before the pandemic, and that busts a myth. Emily, do you want to give us some of those actual numbers?

Emily Eisner: Sure, Brian. Thanks so much for having us. Our report took a deep dive on the numbers over the past I guess eight years of data from the American Community Survey. The numbers that you're asking about right now are that we had a growth of about 15,000 millionaire households between 2020 and 2022. Over that same period, there were about 2,400 millionaire households that left the state, but yes, as you're pointing out, what we find is that those people leaving are far outweighed by the growth in millionaire households in the state over the same years.

Brian Lehrer: Growth in millionaire households in the state, meaning people who are already here started earning more or millionaires are moving in?

Emily Eisner: It's primarily driven by people who are already living in the state who have seen wage growth and a booming economy that has pushed them into the millionaire class, meaning making over a million dollars a year.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned the American Community Survey. For people who don't know that term, that means that these are Census Bureau numbers, not from the 2020 census, the every 10-year census, but from more recently this every-couple-of-years smaller surveying that they do. Correct?

Emily Eisner: Yes, that's correct. They do the American Community Survey every year. It's a sample of households, so it's unlike the decennial census, which is, I believe what most people are familiar with. The American Community Survey samples about-- I believe it's 120,000 households in the state every year. It's a sample and they weight it so that we get pretty accurate views into what's going on with the entire state, but you're correct, it's not every household being sampled every year.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, what do you mean by millionaires? Is that people with a million dollars worth of assets like savings and stocks and the value of their homes, or people actually making a million dollars per year?

Emily Eisner: Oh, that's a really important question. In our study, we're using the definition of millionaires as people making over a million dollars in a given year. It's not about assets, it's about income.

Brian Lehrer: That's the more stark definition of millionaire and the more important one for policymakers. Where are the people making the most money each year choosing to live? Let me stay with you, Emily, for another minute or two because you're the economist. Was there a loss in those high earners in New York state at the beginning of the pandemic?

Emily Eisner: That's a great question. I'm going to just take this opportunity to talk a little bit about our key findings in the report because I think you're asking the big question. There's a discourse in the state right now, especially amongst policymakers in the press that talks about people leaving the state and has concern that high earners are leaving the state in large numbers.

That concern is largely motivated by concern that the tax base is shrinking and that we might have issues paying for public services in the state. Our report was intended to do a deep dive into the data to see if those concerns are legitimate and if we actually should be worried about the tax base. To answer your question, there was elevated outmigration of high earners, particularly in 2020, and there's two reasons for that that really drove that.

One reason is that as we all experienced, the pandemic really changed a lot of our lives, and one major change to a lot of high earners lives is that people could work from home. In 2020 and 2021, there was a shift, there were people who left the state and the city because they could work from home. They were no longer tied to the city. I just alluded to it, but a lot of that really was driven by people leaving the city, not really the state, and so we saw people move into the suburbs more.

We saw people move to a little outside the city. We're seeing that as a general trend in the US that people wanted to leave dense metro areas and have more space during the pandemic. Now, what our report does that's different and new and that we haven't seen done by other researchers is that we then look at data in 2022, which only came out in the last few months.

In 2022 we see that high-earner out-migration has really gone back to the pre-pandemic norm, and that pre-pandemic norm is about a quarter the rate of what the general of-- Sorry, let me rephrase this. The pre-pandemic norm is that high earners leave at about a quarter of the rate of the general population. We really don't see high outmigration of high earners from the state in general. We did see a bit of an elevated rate during the pandemic, but it's returned.

Brian Lehrer: All right. We're going to get to everybody else in that relatively higher rate of people with more regular incomes moving out, but Andrew, this is where you come in as a policy person. There were tax increases on high earners in 2017 and 2021 in New York State that you argue did not chase a lot of high earners out of New York State. Remind us what those tax hikes were and then what effect the Census Bureau number seemed to indicate they had or did not have.

Andrew Perry: Sure thing, Brian. This is the other really key part of our data. The first part, as Emily mentions, is looking just at the basic trends. Are there high-income earners in New York State? Are they leaving at higher rates? Then we really wanted to zoom in on the effect of recent tax changes on migration and if there seems to be a behavioral response of these pushing them out.

We looked at two recent tax changes. The first, in December of 2017, the US Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which among other things, reduced the deductibility of state and local income taxes or state and local taxes or the SALT cap, which was an effective tax increase, especially for higher income earners because higher income earners tend to pay more state and local taxes, and they were formerly able to deduct them.

This wasn't New York State raising taxes on high earners, but it was an active congress that raised their effective tax rate. That was the first tax change. The second tax change was in 2021. New York State in response to Covid-era fiscal deficits created some new tax brackets at the very top of the income distribution and raised rates for the top earners. They raised the top rate for people with a million dollars of income or higher, and then they created new higher rates for people with 5 and $25 million. These tax changes in 2017 and 2021 were the two most relevant policy changes that we looked at. Using, actually not the census data, but data from the New York State Tax Department, we looked at the likelihood of people who were affected by these tax changes of moving out of the state in the year or two following those changes. We really found no effect. We didn't find an uptick in outmigration in the relevant groups following those tax changes.

Now, if tax migration was a real phenomenon, you would expect there to be some statistically meaningful increase where people who are affected by tax changes start to flee. We really just didn't see any effect. That was one key piece of evidence we have that tax changes really don't seem to be especially relevant in driving migration. The other key piece of evidence I want to point to comes from our census data. We looked at when high-income people do leave the state, where do they go? If high-income people are disproportionately going to low-tax states, maybe if high-income people are disproportionately moving to Florida, it seems like that might be some evidence of tax-motivated migration. What we found is actually just the opposite.

We found that most people, when they leave the state across the income distribution go to neighboring states, Connecticut, New Jersey, when the top 1% leave the state, they go to those neighboring states and California. Those three states together account for about 75% of the states that outbound high-earners go to.

Brian Lehrer: The point being that those are high-tax states too.

Andrew Perry: Exactly right. Those are other states that have relatively high taxes, so any tax changes moving across any four of these states, you are really going to be pretty negligible. We don't think you're going to pick up your whole life for any differential between these states.

Brian Lehrer: This is where it really gets political and where it becomes political myth-busting. I'm going to play a clip of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. You just name-checked Florida there as a state that maybe people think New Yorkers are moving to more than they actually are. Here's DeSantis at a campaign stop in Nevada comparing Florida and New York explicitly.

Governor Ron DeSantis: I'll tell you what, you also look at the difference between how some of these states are governed. A great comparison in states is Florida versus New York because we're the closest of the big states in population. We actually have millions more people in Florida now than New York does. Yet, even though we have millions of more people, New York State's budget is twice the size of Florida State's budget. Yet we have better roads, better services, higher performing K through 12 schools, and no income tax. What is New York doing by taxing people? What are they doing spending all this money on? It's not improving the quality of life. I can tell you that.

Brian Lehrer: Ron DeSantis on the stump. Emily, I'll go back to you as the economist. New York did lose population in the last decade. We lost a congressional seat after the 2020 census because of that compared to Florida, which is gaining population, or I should say New York is gaining population more slowly. The indication is that people are moving to Florida. How do you put all this together?

Emily Eisner: Sure. Andrew just pointed out that when we look at high earners, those folks are 75% of high earners who leave the state, as we already pointed out are moving to other high-tax states. When you look at working-class and middle-class people who are leaving New York, and I forget the precise number, but that group is actually moving to Florida at a higher rate than the high earners.

Brian Lehrer: The lower income. Hold that thought because we're going to spend the whole second part of this conversation on the "regular earners." Let me go to the phones though to start making that pivot because people are calling in in response to our invitation. If you have moved out of New York State in the last year or are considering doing so, tell us why. Line one, Alison in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alison.

Alison: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I'm a new parent, relatively I have a 2-year-old here. Part of why we wanted to move here was just the amazing diversity and richness here in New York for our child to grow up in. Originally from California. With the impending potential big, big cuts to this free 3-K and Pre-K programming, that is really stressful for our family [laughs] who is counting on that care to be able to afford to stay and live here, potentially have another kid, maybe retire one day. Right now we're making the choice to pay for childcare instead of health insurance. That's how bad we were wanting to stay in New York, but without the promise of free 3-K and UPK, that's really discouraging.

Would love to see funding move in the other direction, expanding care for all kids under five instead of cutting care for three and four-year-olds. We are considering moving out [laughs] of the state to California where we have family support and potentially more free and low-cost childcare. I started volunteering with New Yorkers United for Childcare which is a new organization that's popped up to try to stop the cuts to 3-K and Pre-K and also potentially expand free childcare for kids under five because it's something I'm really passionate about and it affects my day-to-day life. I really love New York.

Brian Lehrer: Alison, I'm going to leave it there, but I am going to go from you on line 1 to Skye on line 2 in Red Hook. It's interesting that the first two callers who showed up in response to this invitation have basically the same reason. Skye, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Skye: Hello. Thank you so much for taking my call. I've always wanted to say longtime listener, first-time caller, so thanks for having me on. [crosstalk] I live in Red Hook Brooklyn, I'm going to be having a baby here in a couple of months in April. It's very interesting, I also volunteer for New Yorkers United for Childcare. It's a new organization that's fighting to stop the cuts to pre-K and 3-K that are proposed.

Brian Lehrer: You should go to Flatbush and have lunch with Alison, but go ahead.

Skye: [laughs]. I think I actually know her [laughs], but the whole idea is to push for expanding free childcare for all kids under five. That's the objective of this organization. Basically just wanted to call and say the cost of childcare that we're anticipating having to face is a little bit scary. I don't know what kind of sacrifices we're going to have to make in order to stay in the city, and I think there's a good chance that we won't really be able to just in the reality of it. That's how it will affect our lives.

Brian Lehrer: Skye, thank you. Thank you very much. Let's go to Sam in Newark, who's got another reason for moving out of New York state. Sam, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Sam: Hey, Brian, thanks for taking my call. Also, a long-time listener, first-time caller. My story's a little different. I was living in the Hudson Valley, mid-Hudson Valley area and some downstream effects of what your speakers were talking about is that now rents and home prices in that area, which were affordable as of even just pre-pandemic have really skyrocketed. For people who are middle-income earners even me being a single mid-30s millennial it's become increasingly unaffordable. I recently moved to Philadelphia in order to start saving some money again. It's also an area where there's very little reliability on public transportation. You have to have a car and for people balancing all those things, it's become really difficult.

Brian Lehrer: Sam, thank you very much. All right. We're going to pause there on the callers and go back to our guests from the Fiscal Policy Institute, which crunched these new census numbers and discovered that low and behold, millionaires are not fleeing New York State. There are more people earning a million dollars per year in New York State today than there were before the pandemic according to the census, it's everyone else that's moving out at faster rates. I guess a question I want to ask, Andrew, is why aren't millionaires moving out of New York state if taxes are so high here? I realize taxes aren't the only factor. People often want to be near their families, or people like being with people who are like them politically, or because New York has abortion rights and doesn't ban books or history lessons like Florida does, but New York also has other problems that DeSantis was citing in the clip, crime, whatever. Does data from the census or anywhere else have any measurable answers as to why high-income people who can leave are not leaving?

Andrew Perry: That's a great question, Brian. We think our research really is confirmed by some existing academic research, which shows that the highest-income people tend to move less than everybody else in general because they tend to be highly embedded in their communities. No matter what the cost of living, which obviously affects people like your three collars, it affects really most people across the state, the highest-income people aren't going to be driven out by the cost of living, and so they're really going to be embedded in their communities.

They have extensive career networks and social networks that are in the city. It's costly to move away from those career networks. I think during COVID, there was a temporary disruption where the pull of those networks was less in the early stages of the pandemic when everyone went remote. Now that offices are back and people are seeing that it's nice to be near your co-workers again, you can do in-person events and high-income people can go to galas and things that they like to do, the pull of those social networks, I think, is returned, and we've seen that in the data.

We've seen that their migration rate has fallen again. In terms of the pull of New York, first of all, I think you mentioned crime. Florida has a higher crime rate than New York and its cities have a higher crime rate than New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Boy, that's something that if that's true, doesn't get covered by the press very much.

Andrew Perry: I think that's right. I think there's a lot of anecdotes about Florida versus New York, and something that I hope this report does is add a little bit of actual data to the conversation. Then the other thing is that New York does have the strongest labor-- It has the biggest and strongest labor market in the country. One of the biggest and strongest labor markets in the world.

That's really a pull factor for people who want to come here and make some money, and start businesses that require advanced professionals with high levels of education and so on.

Brian Lehrer: Now, there is pushback on your findings from a more conservative New York economy think tank, and also from the New York State Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli. Emily, I'll bring you back in as the economist on this. The Empire Center think tank was reported by Spectrum News to say, "There's no good reason to be rushing out with microscopic sample sizes of self-reported data unless you're just trying to cudgel the governor into agreeing with your policy prescription."

Do they have a point that these two-year census numbers are a very small sample size over a very short period of time and the state shouldn't base big tax changes on that?

Emily Eisner: I'm going to let my colleague Andrew answer this, actually.

Brian Lehrer: Okay.

Andrew Perry: Thanks, Brian. I'm actually very glad that this came up because it gets to clear the air on a pretty clear error that has been made by our critics. They've erroneously claimed that we have a small sample size. This is based on a pretty clear and overt misreading of-- a misunderstanding of the census data, and a misreading of, actually, one particular table on the Census Bureau website that I could point you to.

Our actual sample size is about 22 times larger than the size of the sample size that they claim we have in every single year. We use six years of data. In total, we have 1.2 million observations in our sample, and our key findings, especially, our key findings that high earners move out at one-quarter the rate of everyone else, and that when they do move, they move to high-tax states, those key findings rely on pools of data.

The pooled data pulls together as many of those observations as are relevant, which really increases the statistical power of our estimates. We feel very confident and comfortable in the statistical rigor and seriousness of our analysis. It's just simply an error to say that our sample size is small. Then further, we use both census data and data from the New York's tax department. Wherever possible, we have our findings from the census data corroborated by finding the same trends in the tax data that we have available.

All of this is discussed in our paper. We have a fairly comprehensive technical appendix at the end of the paper that I would encourage everybody to read if they have these questions.

Emily Eisner: I'm just going to jump in quickly. You mentioned the DiNapoli report, Brian. The DiNapoli report that came out, I guess on Tuesday--

Andrew Perry: The same day [unintelligible 00:25:20]

Emily Eisner: Yes, I guess the same day our report came out. Actually, what we found, I don't know if this speaks to our lives, but we found exciting about the report was it actually corroborates a lot of our results. I think our results and their results are in line. We have the census data in our report, which allows us to look at 2022, which the DiNapoli report can't do because the New York state tax data, they haven't released the 2022 data yet.

The other thing is that they didn't break the data down into as fine buckets of income as we did. Whereas, we looked at people, as we've talked about already, making over a million dollars a year in income, and in the New York state tax data, you can actually look at people making over 5 million a year in income. You can, actually, even look at people making over 10 million a year in income. They didn't break it down at quite that level, whereas we did. Actually, we agree with their analysis. We just happen to have a bit more that we're adding.

Brian Lehrer: That's the high earners part of the census numbers. We're going to take a break and come back, continue to take some phone calls from those of you who have moved out of New York State in the last year or are considering doing so as some anecdotal evidence to put meat on the bones regarding what the census data released by the Fiscal Policy Institute or highlighted by the Fiscal Policy Institute describes, which is to everyone else, why it's the lower income people who are moving out of New York State, and middle-income people who are moving out of New York State, and where they're going. Stay with us, Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

[music]

Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Emily Eisner, Fiscal Policy Institute economist, and Andrew Perry, senior policy analyst for the Fiscal Policy Institute, the left-leaning think tank on the census numbers that they drew attention to this week that, as the New York Times put it, "New York’s Millionaire Class Is Growing. Other People Are Leaving." Let's hear from some of those other people. Gabriel in Brunswick, Georgia, you're on WNYC. Hi, Gabriel.

Gabriel: Hey, Brian. Good morning. Long-time listener, long-time caller. I wanted to address some things that I feel like--

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Why'd you go?

Gabriel: Oh, yes. Let's go.

Brian Lehrer: Why'd you move to Georgia, Gabriel?

Gabriel: I tried to hack it out of New York my entire life well over 30 years. The fact is, it's not just the last year that has been pushing people out of this city, it is systemic, or rather, a lack of systemic keeping of New Yorkers. I can think back to when I was in high school, and I was just hanging out after school. It didn't really seem like there were any programs to be involved in. Certainly, none that included mentorship.

Neither mentoring me nor me mentoring even younger New Yorkers, which is something that I totally would have done, and probably would have set some deeper roots for me and probably some other New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: That's a longstanding critique. What made you finally pull the trigger last year?

Gabriel: I just got too old. I got too old. I couldn't be sleeping on couches. I couldn't be just trying to scrounge just to get by. Brian, I was going to every $1 pizza shop. I was eating at a food bank. I'm a native New Yorker.

Brian Lehrer: The cost of living. Gabriel, I'm going to leave it--

Gabriel: Cost of living, but even more, a spiritual cost of living.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you, Gabriel. Thank you very much. Michelle in Manhattan, thinking about moving out of New York State. Michelle, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Michelle: Hi, thank you, Brian, for taking my call. My biggest thing that I want to-- I've been wanting to leave for a long time, but I agree, the cost of living is just ridiculous. The cost of rent just blows my mind. People actually pay $6,000 a month for rent. I live in StuyTown, and it's like, it's not even a mortgage. You know what I mean?

Brian Lehrer: Right, it's just rent and it goes down on the drain.

Michelle: Mostly, the thing that's pushing me out--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Michelle: Yes, but mostly it's just the way the city has changed and it's just culturally, I feel like since Giuliani came and killed all the adult nightlife, it's like it wasn't valued. It's just the city is for rich people now, and rich people are usually boring. You think about all the artistic movements throughout the years. It's like they all want to flock to New York to be part of it, but it homogenized the entire city.

Brian Lehrer: I know Giuliani way back-

Michelle: We've got chain restaurants.

Brian Lehrer: -way back when, at rules on nightclubs, but to say the--

Michelle: You can't dance in New York. It's like the footloose moment.

Brian Lehrer: In certain places. It must go beyond that for you if you say, "New York is not the cultural mecca that it used to be." Is someplace better?

Michelle: As an artist, it is important to me to have those experiences in that community. I feel like the artist community has been devalued, which used to be a huge draw. Everybody wanted to come to New York. Everybody wanted to be in New York. Everybody wanted to have that experience. Everybody wanted to live that Frank Sinatra song, "I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps." New York is asleep all the time now. Like I said, I live in StuyTown and I see these roving packs of NYU students. It's turned the city into like a beer town. You know what I mean?

Brian Lehrer: A beer town. All right. A college strip. Michelle, thank you very much. I know a lot of you artists listening right now vehemently disagree with whether New York isn't a cultural center anymore, but we've certainly heard this before, about it getting homogenized and tepid artistically, culturally compared to the past. One more call and that's it. Desiree in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Desiree.

Desiree: Hi, Brian. I was already to make plans to move to Florida. My father lives down there. I own property in Florida, and I was all set to start the process of trying to move, but then DeSantis came into power as governor, and that all changed. I do not want to take my children down there to have Black history denied, to have Black history twisted in a way that makes it untrue. I do not want to take my family into what is now more and more seeming like a hostile environment for anyone who is not White and Christian. Everything's on hold.

Brian Lehrer: Desiree, thank you. Reason not to leave New York. Thank you very much. Yet, Emily and Andrew, this brings us to the other part of the census data that you crunched. Again, I'm going to read from the New York Times summary. It says, "The people leaving New York at the fastest rate last year were families making between $32,000 and $65,000. A disproportionately high share of these movers were Black and Hispanic. Talk about that. Emily, if this is more your bucket, tell me about the demographic breakdown by race and income.

Emily Eisner: Sure, Brian. As you already stated, in 2022, the income group that saw the highest outmigration rates, it's the second quintile, it's those making under $100,000 a year. Between $30,000 and $70,000 a year. The group with the second highest rates was those between $70,000 and $100,000 a year. It's really working and middle-class New Yorkers that are leaving the state. As the callers have today already made the point, the affordability issues in New York are immense. Housing costs are extremely high for everyone. Childcare costs are extremely high and out of reach for lots of people. Healthcare costs can be extremely high. There's a lot of affordability issues.

Brian Lehrer: The takeaway or one takeaway would be that rent is more of a burden on low and moderate-income New Yorkers, encouraging them to leave, than high taxes are on high-income owners.

Emily Eisner: Yes, you're doing my job for me. That's precisely the point of our report. We're trying to say, specifically, New York is not having trouble keeping affluent New Yorkers. New York is having trouble keeping low and middle-income New Yorkers. That's a huge problem. That signals a policy failure for New York state policymakers, because it means that we're not providing the public services that people need. We're not keeping the place affordable. It's an economic issue. We need people across the income distribution to work in jobs as teachers, nurses, sanitation workers, artists. We need all of these people to keep our state and city thriving.

Brian Lehrer: If a disproportionately high share of these movers were Black and Hispanic as the census figures show, where are they going?

Emily Eisner: Did we look at that? We're still working on a next report that should come out in the next few months, that's doing a deeper dive into where the low and middle-income New Yorkers are going.

Brian Lehrer: I've seen anecdotally, that it is Florida, it is Texas, it is Georgia like Gabriel. I wonder, Andrew if you have anything on how happy or not they are to be going South for cost of living reasons. Is the weather also a big draw? We just heard the call of Desiree in Brooklyn, that she was going to move to Florida, but the conservative politics since DeSantis became governor have convinced her out of it. Should we conclude-- Of course, everybody's different and people have different politics.

Are the conservative politics a big negative for a lot of the New Yorkers who are moving out, but people feel like they have no choice but to move to places like Florida and Texas? Georgia's a purple state now, or conversely, is it those New Yorkers who are economically squeezed, but also happen to be more conservative who are leaving? Do we know any of those things?

Andrew Perry: That's a great question, Brian. Do we know if people's life satisfaction is higher or less when they make the decision to leave? I'm not aware of any data that would tell us whether that's the case. It's a major life decision. People are making educated guesses. We think that there are a lot of pull factors for New York. The labor market. Some people have mentioned the cultural atmosphere, the access to reproductive healthcare, and so on, are things that I think a lot of people value.

The cost of living, callers have mentioned housing and childcare especially, which are going to be the big cost factors, just are such a push factor that I think whether people are happy about it or not. We do see a consistent outflow of people towards states that simply have lower housing costs. That's really the primary axis. Some of these southern states just do build a lot of housing. Housing is more abundant, it's more affordable. That does seem to be a pull factor that outweighs some of these other considerations that we've discussed. We really think it's an area where New York has to take policy solutions and investment in housing affordability really seriously.

Brian Lehrer: Based on Michelle from StuyTown's call, we might have to do a whole separate segment on how much has New York flattened artistically. Has it really become Disneyfied and College-beer-stripified or has the death of New York's art scene been greatly exaggerated? We'll do that on another day. For now, we leave it on who's leaving New York and who's not, with Emily Eisner, Fiscal Policy Institute economist, and Andrew Perry, Senior Policy Analyst for the group. Thank you so much.

Andrew Perry: Thanks for having us.

Emily Eisner: Thanks so much.

 

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.