Why Are Residents Leaving Illinois in Droves?

It’s known here as The Exodus.

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One thing is certain: Illinois’ population has declined by 157,000 residents over the past five years, making it one of only two states — West Virginia is the other — to lose people over the past decade.

Illinois’ predicament is a perfect storm of declining manufacturing, stagnant immigration, declining birth rates, young people leaving for college and never coming back, long-standing economic discrimination against black residents, high housing costs, and the continued draw of residents to the Sun Belt.

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A 2016 poll by Southern Illinois University found that nearly half of Illinois residents wanted to move to another state, citing taxes, weather, ineffective and corrupt local government and a lack of middle-class jobs. A March poll from the university found that two-thirds of Illinois residents think the state is going in the wrong direction.

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Chicago’s population has dropped slightly, largely because black residents are leaving for areas with lower housing costs and more jobs that don’t require higher education. In downstate Illinois, the population loss has come largely from a decrease in manufacturing jobs.

Tale of Two Cities

Nearly 15 miles south of the famed Magnificent Mile in the booming downtown Loop is another stretch of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. Up until the 1980s, this part of the Roseland neighborhood was “the place to be” for black residents, lined with stores and restaurants. But many of those are gone now, leaving only the boarded-up facades and a distant memory.

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This was a manufacturing hub. But those jobs are gone. Nearly 28% of the population lives below the poverty level, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

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Since peaking in 1980 at nearly 1.2 million people, the black population of Chicago has dropped by more than 400,000 people, and the trend continues. Black residents are leaving Chicago for the suburbs and for neighboring states such as Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin.

Some are reversing the Great Migration of the first half of the 20th century, returning to Southern cities including Atlanta, Dallas and Houston, said Pete Saunders, an urban planning consultant based in the Chicago area who has written extensively on this issue.

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Chicago is among a handful of metropolises that are losing their black residents, including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose.

The high rate of black residents leaving is the main cause for Chicago’s stagnant population, and the drain could get worse, several fair housing advocates and urban demographers said.

More than a third of young adults want to leave Chicago, a January survey from the University of Chicago’s GenForward Project found. Participants, especially African Americans, said the biggest reason for wanting out was racism and how that affects policing, job opportunities and neighborhood development.

Chicago’s new African American mayor, Lori Lightfoot, seems keenly aware of this challenge, calling it “the proverbial canary in the mine shaft” when asked in April about the city’s population decline by the Chicago Tribune.

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Chicago’s population is staying afloat because of a continued influx of Asian immigrants. The number of Chicago-region residents born in Asia has increased by 60,000 since 2010, while the number of Chicago-region residents born in Latin America has decreased by 18,000, according to a Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

While some traditionally Mexican Chicago neighborhoods like Pilsen have been hit by gentrification pressures, Chinatown and other neighborhoods south of the downtown Loop have generally been shielded, said David Wu, executive director of Pui Tak Center, a church-based community center next to the Chinatown gate.

After the 2020 census, the city will have its first majority-Chinese ward, Wu said. The area in 2017 elected Democrat Theresa Mah, the Illinois General Assembly’s first Chinese American member.

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The reality, however, is that Illinois has a brain drain problem.

Nearly half of Illinois college-bound public high school students chose to go to out-of-state universities and colleges in 2017, according to a March analysis by the Illinois Board of Higher Education. In 2002, that number was under 30%. Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin continue to take in more college students than they lose, U.S. Department of Education data show.

When young people go out of state for college, they are less likely to return home after graduation, said Nyle Robinson, the board’s interim executive director. This is especially concerning for the rural, downstate regions that have been losing residents.

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Some neighboring states have tried to take advantage of some of the political turmoil in Illinois and negative press around high taxes and population loss.

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