County-to-County Migration in Missouri, 2015-2019

This StoryMap conveys the raw numbers of county-to-county migration in Missouri. The information is displayed on two different maps – one for county level out-movement and one for county level in-movement. The data used originates from the U.S. Census Bureau and covers the period from 2015 to 2019.

The most out-movement occurred in counties that hold the state’s larger cities or are very close to such cities – Springfield located in Greene County, Columbia located in Boone County, St Charles County, St. Louis County, and Jefferson County are all adjacent to St. Louis City; Clay County is very close to Kansas City which is located in Jackson County. This map displays the raw numbers, as the data are not normalized. The large populations of the counties shown with the most out of county movers may make it look like they experienced more out-movement than they really are in proportion to other counties.

All of the counties with the largest amount of out-movement are represented on the in-movement map in addition to other countries that directly touch them. These extra counties form an exterior ring of sorts around the prominent cities in Missouri. Unfortunately, the data does not specify where movers are coming from. However, one could assume the movement is due to one of two reasons. Either these movers wanted to escape the busyness of the large urban areas without straying too far or they chose to leave more rural areas to be closer to the amenities large cities have to offer. Counties with medium to high in-movement are all located along a major road, such as Interstate 70, Highway 65, and Highway 54. However, this could simply be a coincidence, since the purpose of these roads is to connect major cities which the counties with the most in-movement orient themselves around.

The total net migration per county helps to clear up county-to-county movement patterns, especially in cases where counties experienced both high amounts of in-movement and out-movement. Jackson County, home to Kansas City, Missouri, is particularly interesting. The first two maps show that it had a large number of people moving to and moving from the county, but its net migration is -6,383 people. Likewise, St. Louis City also had high in-movement and out-movement ending with a net migration of -6,225 people. For both major cities, some of the surrounding counties underwent high positive net migration. Aside from counties containing or adjacent to large cities, most of Missouri's counties hovered around or slightly below zero net migration from 2015 to 2019. This is accurately reflected in the in-movement and out-movement maps. However, the counties home to or nearby large cities demonstrated the importance of studying the net numbers to correctly determine migration patterns. Without these, the in-movement and out-movements maps can make it difficult to determine which the county has faced more of, especially in high population areas.