According to the Boston Globe, people who have fled the People’s Republic of Massachusetts have no regrets:
A majority of people who moved out of Massachusetts last year report they are very satisfied with life in their new state and would not move back, a Boston Globe poll has found.I have to commute to Connecticut every work day (2 ½ hours on the road) to work at a job that will pay my Massachusetts taxes.
Seventy-three percent of those surveyed said they live in a home that is bigger than their home in Massachusetts was. Fifty-four percent said their standard of living is higher now.
The top reason people gave for leaving Massachusetts was a better job, followed by the cost of housing, family ties, and the weather. In a separate set of questions, 50 percent of those surveyed said the cost of housing was a ''major factor," and a better job was cited as a ''major factor" by 39 percent.
The findings underscored the difficulties of living, raising children, and earning enough money in Massachusetts, and suggested that these fundamental aspirations of the American middle-class are often easier for people to achieve outside the state.
3 comments:
Eric, I think you missed something very important in this article! They collected information from the utilities. I think we all know how the Globe feels about people's private, personal information that utilities have!
"interviewed 524 people between April 28 and May 4. The respondents, who moved out of Massachusetts in 2005, were randomly selected from a database compiled from change-of-address forms for utilities and telephone service and public records."
Oh the humanity!! The Globe is violating our civil liberties!!
The survey is interesting for its own sake, but it probably wouldn't be of much use for predicting general outcomes (i.e. what are the chances a given person would be happy if they moved out of MA). The biggest reason is that this group is self-selected, consisting only of those motivated and proactive enough to do the work to make the move happen. Such a group presumably has an above average chance to land in a good situation (otherwise they wouldn't have moved in the first place). Also, there is a human tendency to focus on the good results of a choice as opposed to any negative consequences. Thus, there is an inherent pro-satifaction bias to any question that asks a group of people if they made the right decision. I'm sure a large majority of people who have stayed in MA would also say they made the right decision.
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