PA and Allegheny County Migration Data

Your most recent policy brief details migration data for Pennsylvania and Allegheny County.

The data was drawn from the Internal Revenue Service.

Can you tell our listeners how the IRS tracks migration?

Yeah, this is a relatively new database that the IRS has put together.

It goes back to like the early 2000s, where they look at each year's federal tax returns and they document the addresses, where the address was in 2022 for an individual and where it was in the next year, in this case, 2023.

So it takes not only the address to see if someone has moved, how many dependents were there, so you get a total number of people, which could be greater than the number of filers, because if you

have three dependents, then one tax return is four people,

and adjust the gross income.

So we can see not only how many taxpayers have left or migrated into or out of an area like Pennsylvania or specifically a county, we know how much money they either took with them or brought in with them.

So it's a very fascinating look at how people are really voting with their feet and where they're following the opportunities.