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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Growing Michigan Together Council delivered its 86-page report in December on ideas for repopulating Michigan. For the uninitiated, Michigan’s population has — at best — stagnated over the years. Since 1990, Michigan has ranked 49th among the states in population growth, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
But a council wasn’t needed. Scholars at the Mackinac Center and elsewhere have, for decades, examined what makes a state grow quickly, slowly, or not at all.
During the aughts, outbound migration from Michigan was of such concern that it practically became a subspecialty of the Mackinac Center. We repeatedly demonstrated that citizens were moving to areas of the country that offered more economic opportunity.
The Mackinac Center researched specific causes of interstate migration. We found that for every 10% differential in personal tax rates between nearby states, 4,700 more people would leave the higher-tax state every year thereafter. By this light, Michigan is moving quickly in the wrong direction: As Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin move toward lower-tax policies, the governor and her party are waging a relentless campaign to stamp out the mandatory tax cut that took effect in 2023.
Scholars have done a lot of work to find out what drives population trends. Economist Hannah Kling reviewed nearly 100 studies and discovered that people are moving to states that provide high-quality services, lighter taxes and fewer regulations. The Mackinac Center published her review, “How to Make Michigan Grow: What the Research Says,” in November.
One academic study Kling highlighted used a highly respected dataset from Canada’s Fraser Institute that measures economic liberty in three major categories: taxes, spending and labor market regulation. Each one-percentage-point increase in a state’s score on the labor market freedom index results in a 2.8% increase in in-migration. Michigan’s labor market was 40th among the 50 states.
This is just one example from the study, but there are others.
Members of the governor’s population council would be wise to read the Mackinac Center’s latest study. Right now, they are chasing ideas with little or no evidence that those ideas will work.
