In Joan Didion’s 1967 essay “Goodbye to All That,” she writes of knowing the time to leave New York City came when “at some point the golden rhythm was broken.”
While it might be blasphemous for Bostonians to be compared to New Yorkers, there’s some similarity in that sentiment for why people are packing up and leaving Massachusetts.
The rise of work-from-home policies during the pandemic meant people could work from anywhere and were no longer tethered to an office accessed by less-than-reliable T transit or a clogged Massachusetts highway. Why not work under the palm trees of South Florida?
Beyond the benefits of trading cold winters for a sunny, warm backdrop, Massachusetts residents in recent years have endured surging home prices that nudge homeownership farther from reach for first-time and cost-sensitive buyers. On the tax policy side, the state’s passage of the so-called millionaires tax has critics saying Massachusetts will lose some of its wealthiest residents to states with a more favorable tax rate.
Salaries in Greater Boston exceed the national average by 31 percent, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, but even that isn’t enough to make the cost of living pencil out for many.
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“Salaries don’t really match the rent prices,” said Alyssa K., a two-time Boston resident who returned to the city after getting a master’s degree in social work in Chicago but now plans on returning to the Windy City. “If the prices were more affordable, I would stay.”
The 2023 National Movers Study by United Van Lines cited retirement, lifestyle, and job opportunities as the leading reasons for Massachusetts’ out-migration. But while former Boston Celtics player Grant Williams cited the millionaires tax as a factor in his decision to favor a trade to the Dallas Mavericks (he now plays for the Charlotte Hornets) over staying in Boston, others say cost of living concerns outweigh those of tax policy in terms of what’s driving the everyday person away from Massachusetts.
“Taxes can influence decisions made by families or businesses, but they are typically one of many things influencing those decisions,” said Richard C. Auxier, a principal policy associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
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The high cost of living, especially when it comes to housing and child care, are the leading reasons why people are weighing whether to move out of Massachusetts, added Kurt Wise, a senior policy analyst at the Massachusetts Budget & Policy Center, a progressive think tank.
A MassBudget report released last month points to migration into and out of Massachusetts using data from the US Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service. While it’s too early to get a full picture of the impact of the millionaires tax, the MassBudget report instead cautions that, while the state population is still growing, high costs are driving people away.
The report indicated that 55 percent of those leaving the state are 26 to 45 years old, and more than 80 percent of that group had incomes below $200,000 per year. One in 6 residents who left Massachusetts between 2021 and 2022 had an income above that figure.
“These are young people who are in the process of starting careers, buying homes, kind of settling down and starting families,” Wise said. “These are not the people who have any direct personal reason to have a lot of concern about a millionaires tax.”
Shannon Gibson, a Fort Worth-based social worker, and her husband had a boomerang move from Texas to Boston and back again to Texas in the past few years fueled by New England’s high costs. While the couple was pulled to Boston for job opportunities, the lifestyle, and potential for raising a family, the price tag for housing and child care was too much for their growing family, which now includes two children.
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“It’s a great quality of life, but it is expensive,” Gibson said. “We would save the amount that I thought we needed for a down payment, and then housing prices would shoot up 100 or 200 grand. It just felt like the finish line to being a homeowner kept moving further and further away from us.”
After six years in Boston, Gibson and her husband moved back to Texas and now live closer to family — and pay $1,000 less a month in rent for a place that is twice as big as their former residence in Woburn, she said. So, is Boston fully in the rearview mirror for Gibson?
Unlike Didion, Gibson isn’t ready to say goodbye to all that.
“I really have strong hopes that life does take us back to Boston,” she said. “We left Boston saying we’ll be back.”
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