What is brain drain?
Mississippi’s most valuable export is not cars or cotton or catfish. It is college graduates.
Former Governor William Winter often remarked, “The road out of the poorhouse runs past the schoolhouse.” But for an increasing number of educated young Mississippians, the next stop on the road to opportunity is across the state line. They are moving to Atlanta or Nashville or other metropolitan areas that offer jobs and lifestyle options that they cannot find in their home state. People born and educated outside of Mississippi see little incentive to move in to take their place. The result is a persistent outflow of Mississippi’s most precious commodity: its talent.
This is a problem commonly known as “brain drain.” Brain drain is a vicious cycle that weakens the state’s economy, shrinks the tax base, and frays the fabric of communities. Once the cycle starts, it accelerates under its own momentum. Each wave of departures leaves less reason for others to stay – fewer jobs, lower pay, worse infrastructure and services. The people who can get out are given more encouragement to do so, while the people who cannot are forced to endure.
As much as any other factor, brain drain explains why Mississippi has been cemented to the bottom of every national ranking of economic and social well-being for generations — and, without a solution, why Mississippi will stay there for generations to come. The people who have received the best education the state has to offer have the most ability to leave and largest incentive to do so. In essence, the taxpayers of the poorest state in the country are subsidizing the economies of the wealthier states where people educated in Mississippi choose to live, work, and pay taxes. When other Southerners use the mocking phrase, “Thank God for Mississippi,” it is unlikely that they stop to consider the massive economic and cultural contributions that Mississippi’s expats have made to their states.
Many people who have stayed in Mississippi can, and often do, speak about the toll that brain drain has wrought on their lives and communities: the separation from friends and family who now live far away; the boarded-up businesses that have closed for lack of customers and employees; the overstretched local governments that cannot maintain infrastructure or services; the vacant houses in their neighborhood and erosion of property values; the churches with empty pews and schools with empty classrooms.
The Facts
Mississippians who leave are almost twice as likely to have a college degree as people who stay.
40% of Mississippi natives who leave the state have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 21% of people who stay. Half of graduates with a four-year degree move away, while 70% of people with an associate’s degree or high school diploma remain in Mississippi.
The economic cost to the state is at least $8 billion per decade.
The state economist’s office estimated that the state’s personal income would grow by $173 million annually by retaining an additional 1,200 graduates each year for the next decade. Their economic impact will compound year over year, so the state’s economy would be at least 6% larger at the end of the decade than at the beginning – doubling the growth rate over the prior decade.
Mississippi has lost more than 80,000 residents through net outmigration since 2010.
Put together, they would make up the second-largest city in the state. For a decade, the rate of outmigration has outpaced natural growth (births minus deaths), sending the state’s total population into decline. Despite being located in the fastest-growing region in America, Mississippi was one of only three states to lose population in the 2020 Census, and the population decline has accelerated since 2020, largely due to Covid deaths and a falling birth rate.
Losses are greatest among prime working-age people and families.
Between 2010 and 2020, Mississippi suffered a net loss of 41,000 25-34-year-olds, or 10% of its early-career population. Families are leaving the state, as the population under 18 shrunk by 26,000 over the decade through outmigration. People are choosing to leave Mississippi to work or raise a family. Only once those phases of life are over is the state an attractive place to be: Mississippi’s population over 60 increased by 15,000.
80% of Mississippi’s counties are losing more people than they attract.
Of the state’s 82 counties, 66 experienced net outmigration in decade prior to the 2020 Census. In general, counties that are rural, persistently low-income, and undereducated experienced the worst losses – all symptoms of the brain drain cycle. Several Delta counties lost a quarter of their population through outmigration during the decade. But Hinds County — the state’s largest county, the hub of the state’s government and economy — also experienced one of the steepest drops: 18% of its population moved away. Jackson held the title of the fastest-shrinking big city in America in both 2019 and 2022. The suburbs outside of Memphis and Jackson, the college towns, and the Coast had positive inmigration rates, but most of their growth came from movers from shrinking parts of the state instead of transplants from other states.