How discriminatory legislation contributes to brain drain

For me, the experience is visceral—a flush of heat in my neck and cheeks, a rush of shame, sweaty palms, a quickened heartbeat. These physiological responses surface every time I enter a public restroom. I keep my head down and don’t make eye contact with anyone for any reason. I avoid restrooms when children are present, fearing accusations and confrontation. I am transgender. 

There’s something profoundly unsettling about your state legislating where you can and cannot use the restroom. It goes beyond “no women in the men’s room” to “no trans people in public.” That is the desired effect of these laws, and they work. 

I no longer participate in public life the way I used to. I don’t attend sporting events or theatre productions, and I only eat out at restaurants with gender-neutral restrooms, a fact I need to research in advance. I find myself keeping money in my wallet that I otherwise would have spent, had I felt welcome in public. 

Very few white Americans will understand the intense melancholy of being legislated against, of having your state restrict where you can live, work, and contribute. It certainly depletes my state pride. 

So I’m leaving Ohio. 

And I’m not alone. 

I’m moving with my wife and we are joined by her father, sister, and brother. Our family represents a combined 8 undergraduate degrees and 3.5 graduate degrees leaving the state of Ohio. 

This is a concrete manifestation of Ohio’s self-inflicted brain drain resulting from anti-transgender legislation.

While this is our family’s experience, this is a wider phenomenon than just us. The problem with discriminatory legislation (and lack of protections for minorities) is that it increases the cost of living in a certain community relative to other communities. This phenomenon has been studied in Ohio for over a decade, with a survey conducted by researchers at Wright State University revealing that LGBT marriage equality laws, LGBT anti-discrimination employment laws, and LGBT anti-discrimination housing laws, were important factors for college students considering whether to leave Ohio.

Living in a state that legally sanctions discrimination levies significant costs on families, especially considering nearby alternatives. 14 states and the District of Columbia currently have “sanctuary laws,” for transgender people designed to protect access to gender-affirming healthcare services. These fourteen states include Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maryland. 

It can be hard to estimate the number of transgender individuals living in a state. LGBTQIA+ people have concerns around data privacy when disclosing such personal information as gender identity or sexual orientation. Especially given recent concerns around data privacy at the federal level, this data gap is unlikely to close soon. 

Generally we estimate transgender people to make up half to one percent of the total population. That means that there could be anywhere from 59,400-118,800 total transgender people in the state of Ohio. According to the Data for Social Progress survey results, 8% of transgender people reported already moving, a potential loss of 4,700-9,500 Ohioans. 

An analysis from McKinsey and Company found that cisgender employees make 32% more money per year than transgender employees, even when the latter have similar or higher education levels. Despite the small size of the transgender population and the relatively small impact we have on the economy, many states continue to push anti-transgender legislation. McKinsey’s analysis found that annual consumer spending could actually grow by $12 billion annually following concerted efforts to increase employment and wage equity for transgender people.

Discrimination against transgender people has wide-ranging effects on the economy. For example, a white paper from the Sports, Events, and Tourism Association published evidence from the Texas Association of Business that discriminatory anti-trans legislation could result in an estimated economic loss to Texas’ gross domestic product ranging from $964 million to $8.5 billion.

Despite the promise of economic growth, Ohio has continued to legislate against LGBTQIA+ residents. The evidence shows this will worsen Ohio’s brain drain problem and hamper Ohio’s economy.

Another likely unanticipated effect of this legislation is the self-inflicted brain drain Ohio perpetuates with these laws.

I have a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa and many hours of advanced graduate course work from the Ohio State University. My wife has a bachelor’s degree from Otterbein University and is a licensed educator. We both work full-time jobs, volunteer regularly, and contribute essential grassroots support to the homeless individuals in our communities. But we’ve decided Ohio is no longer a place we want to call home, because its laws don’t want us here. 

So we are taking our college degrees, my father-in-law, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law in addition to two of our closest friends to Chicago, where Illinois has made it clear that we will all be welcome. 

This isn’t just about individual choices; it’s about broader economic implications. Policies that are unwelcoming to certain populations don’t just push out those directly affected—they also drive entire communities to leave. When people relocate, they take their expertise, their purchasing power, and their tax dollars with them.

As we prepare to leave Ohio, I'm keenly aware that our departure represents more than just a personal decision—it's emblematic of a larger exodus that has significant human and economic costs. 

Ohio's human capital loss will be Illinois’s human capital gain. I'm moving toward a future where I won't need to calculate the risk of using a public restroom. Time will tell: was the political victory of targeting a vulnerable population worth the cost of driving away educated, productive citizens and their families?

Which U.S. states are growing the most?

"Population growth and human ingenuity go hand in hand. More people means more minds, more innovation, and ultimately, more solutions to the world's challenges."

— Julian Simon, Economist

When state policymakers wring their hands about population growth, they are channeling Simon. Population growth means more people buying goods, more employees, more people starting businesses, and more people paying taxes. While there have been states that have been able to maintain high quality of life despite a plateauing population (looking at you, Vermont), many state leaders are interested in population growth as an indicator of a state’s health.

In 2024 the Pew Charitable Trusts released a map which details the changes in population over the past fifteen years. Let’s take a look at which states are succeeding the most on this metric of state health.. 

1. Utah

Over the last 15 years, the fastest growing state in the country is Utah. Utah has seen a 1.68% increase in population yearly between 2009-2023. Historically, the rise in Utah’s population was primarily attributable to natural increase, or annual births minus annual deaths. Now, interstate migration is contributing significantly to the state’s growth. Growth in Utah and Salt Lake Counties accounted for 64% of statewide population growth in the last year. As Salt Lake County becomes more expensive, more people are settling slightly farther out from the city in the Provo area. 

Three of the top five fastest-growing states seem to be growing at least partly due to wildfires and the rising cost of living sweeping the western sea board. In August of 2024, the NIH released a study finding that “wildfires were only associated with heightened out-migration in tracts that experienced the highest levels of structure loss.” Still more alarming were the findings by Nature Communications that in the last two decades, “only the most extreme wildfires (258+ structures destroyed) influenced migration patterns.” The increasing frequency and severity of wildfires on the west coast contributes significantly to the population change experienced there.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there have been nearly 15,000 wildfires since January 1, 2025. These fires have burned almost 400,000 acres across the United States. This is already above the 10-year average of nearly 8,800 wildfires per year. 

The UCLA Anderson School of Management found that Los Angeles County rents were slightly higher after wildfires. Decreased housing supplies, increased fire risk, and rising insurance rates give workers reason to emigrate. As fewer houses remained standing after the fires, an increased demand for housing must compete with the decreased supply, and prices rose. Displaced families are moving to interior states like Utah in search of safe, affordable housing. 

2. Idaho

Idaho is the second fastest growing state in the country. Between 2009-2023 the state grew by 430,000 residents. More than 17,300 of these new residents came from Washington, just barely more than the 17,000 from California. About 7,000 of these new Idaho residents came from Oregon. Because these individuals are moving from more expensive states, 50% of newcomers own a home within a year. Meridian, a suburb of Boise, has grown the fastest over this time period. 

3. Texas

The third fastest-growing state is Texas. Texas has experienced a large population increase due to international immigration. In 2022, more than 1,000 migrants per day crossed into the state of Texas. Domestic migration also significantly increased Texas’s population—most of these new residents hailed from California. Interstate migrants were attracted by the state’s affordability and job opportunities. 

4. Florida

Florida is the fourth fastest growing state in the country. Florida has not had the same wild-fire impacts as states like Utah and Idaho. Rather, Florida’s rise in population has largely come from international migration. In 2024, there were 411,322 new Florida residents who came from other countries. Overall, there were 23 million people living in Florida, with an increase of 467,000 people over 2023. Due to the older population in the state, Florida was one of 17 states that had more deaths than births. 

5. Nevada

In fifth place is Nevada. Between 2009-2023, Nevada experienced 1.24% population growth per year. Since 2018, about 48,000 new residents cross into the state each year. According to the Reno Gazette Journal, the state is anticipated to reach 4 million residents by the year 2043.

Overall, two trends seem to be driving growth in the fastest-growing states. With rising prices and more frequent, intense environmental disasters battering the west coast, Americans are voting with their feet and seeking safer, more affordable homes in inland western states like Idaho, Nevada, and Utah. Opportunities in the United States are driving people from other countries to come to states like Florida and Texas. We will have to see how changing dynamics in housing and immigration will impact these trends over the next fifteen years.

Do carbon prices actually work?

Carbon prices have been suggested as a tool for mitigating climate change for decades now, but despite many countries adopting official carbon prices and implementing cap and trade programs, there is very little empirical evidence about how effective these programs are at actually mitigating global climate change.

The main reason this question is difficult to answer is due to leakage. Because climate change is a global problem, local reductions in carbon emissions could be offset by increased emissions elsewhere. We might expect this to happen in places where a carbon tax is implemented because it would be marginally less expensive to outsource high pollution industries to places with fewer restrictions. 

Last week, a new article made progress on answering this question. 

These researchers looked at the impact of the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme, a cap-and-trade plan implemented in 2005. While a cap-and-trade program and a more straightforward carbon tax are technically different, they achieve the same goal theoretically. 

Both of these setups encourage industries to adapt their methods to reduce their carbon emissions, and provide a bonus incentive for industries that can adapt at lower costs. Both policy choices result in polluters having to pay some cost for their carbon emissions.

To understand whether or not carbon prices were truly lowering global carbon emissions, these researchers looked at three possible channels of leakage. First, they explored whether or not firms were outsourcing their carbon intensive parts of their production chain to places with fewer regulations. They concluded that this was not a major factor because if this were happening, firms would have reduced value added to the economy. 

To understand value added, consider a car manufacturer. If the manufacturer imports all of the individual components of a car and then assembles it, their value added comes from the labor used to assemble the car. If this firm decided they needed to dodge regulations and switched to importing mostly assembled cars that they just had to put the finishing touches on, then we’d see that in the value added. 

When these researchers looked at data from French manufacturers, they found that value added did not substantially decrease, nor did the carbon intensity of their imports increase. This suggests that instead these manufacturers were changing their practices to lower their emissions without relying on increased pollution from outside the regulation’s jurisdiction.

The second avenue for carbon leakage would be if consumers switched to purchasing goods from unregulated firms. If this were happening, there would be economic contraction among the regulated firms as they would have to face increased competition from unregulated firms. Again, among the French manufacturers there was no such trend. 

The final channel for leakage would be if firms operating multiple facilities could shift their production in such a way that more production was happening in unregulated facilities. To account for this they performed their analysis at the firm level, so they would have directly observed any shifting of pollution that was not captured by the regulation. The researchers found no evidence of this.

It’s easy to see that carbon prices reduce local pollution, but it is encouraging to see new evidence to support the idea that this is actually making a global difference. Evidence like this should make local policymakers worried about the impact of leakage more confident that prices placed on carbon locally will lead to global results for slowing climate change.

Two ways policymakers are trying to reshape Medicaid in Ohio

Medicaid is one of the largest health care programs in the state of Ohio. This federal health care program for low-income families and children pays for more than one in five hospital visits and provides health care coverage for over three million Ohio residents–more than a quarter of the state population.

Medicaid was created over half a century ago as part of the 1965 Great Society amendments to the Social Security Act. Originally granting public health insurance coverage to children, pregnant women, retirement-age people, and people with disabilities, Medicaid was expanded in the 1980s to allow more state flexibility and expand eligibility to pregnant women and children regardless of welfare status.

While Medicaid dodged the chopping block that other public assistance programs faced during welfare reform in the 1990s, the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act introduced cost-sharing measures and gave states more flexibility to design benefits, allowing premium charges and service-specific copayments for some populations. The Affordable Care Act in 2010 expanded Medicaid to cover nearly all adults with incomes under 138% of the federal poverty level, but a 2012 Supreme Court decision relegated that coverage to state discretion.

All this has led to a system of low-income health coverage that is heavily dependent on decisions made by state policymakers.

In the state of Ohio, over half of the state General Revenue Fund is designated to Medicaid spending. This has made the program a focus for policymakers interested in reducing state spending.

In the proposed state budget, the Governor has included two provisions that could reduce the state’s spending on Medicaid.

Work Requirements

Medicaid has not traditionally been a program that requires its recipients to work. Since it was originally targeted at pregnant women, children, people with disabilities, and retirement-age people, work requirements were not much of a consideration even during the welfare reform era of the 1990s.

During the first Trump Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services started approving waivers for state governments to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. While the Trump Administration approved the request for 13 states, only Arkansas fully implemented the requirements before they were struck down by a federal judge. In Arkansas, about 18,000 people lost health care coverage under the requirements. About half of cases closed were due to problems with communication, with red tape causing thousands of Arkansas residents to lose health care coverage.

Ohio was one of the thirteen states that were approved by the first Trump Administration to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. More than a month before President Trump took office in January of this year, the state Department of Medicaid had applied for a waiver from the federal Department of Health and Human Services to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. The state estimates 61,000 Ohio residents could lose health coverage under the work requirements. The Center for Community Solutions, a Cleveland-based health and human services think tank, estimates the number of people who could lose their health insurance under work requirements could be as high as 450,000.

Medicaid Expansion Repeal “Trigger”

When Medicaid was expanded under the Affordable Care Act, one of the bill’s provisions was to have the federal government cover 90% of Medicaid spending for this newly-eligible group of low-income people. This was meant to ensure the group continued to receive medical coverage without overly burdening state budgets.

This provision became even more important when the Supreme Court made Medicaid expansion an optional element of the Affordable Care Act. One of the largest selling points for states deciding whether to allow coverage of these residents was that nine dollars would be coming into the state for every dollar they spent–a pretty good investment of state dollars.

A total of 41 states have now expanded Medicaid. Most of the states which have not expanded eligibility are in the South. Ohio expanded Medicaid under the Kasich administration and as of February 2025, 770,000 Ohioans receive health care coverage under that expansion program.

A number of states, however, have also adopted laws that make this health care coverage contingent on continuing support from the federal government. A total of 12 states have implemented “trigger language” that would automatically revoke health care coverage from people covered under the Affordable Care Act expansion of Medicaid if the federal match drops below 90%. About 4.2 million Medicaid recipients across the country would lose coverage if these trigger laws were invoked at the same time. Governor DeWine’s budget includes a provision to have Ohio join this list, making it the 13th state to include trigger language if the federal government reduces its match.

This is especially salient right now as Congress is debating an extension of the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act, the signature legislative accomplishment of the first Trump Administration. Cuts to pay for federal spending increases would have to come from somewhere, and Medicaid is one of the top targets of Congress today. Reducing the federal match rate could be an easy way for Congress to cut spending on Medicaid across the country and free up space for federal tax cuts. This would mean removing health care coverage for 770,000 people in Ohio to pay for federal tax cuts.

What do these mean?

Both of these changes to Medicaid policy in Ohio would mean fewer people with health coverage in the state. Ohio currently has 94% of its residents with health insurance. Medicaid is the most common non-employer form of health insurance in the state, covering more Ohio residents than Medicare, individual insurance, and military insurance combined.

Both of these policies could remove coverage for the 770,000 Ohioans who receive health insurance due to Medicaid expansion. Medicaid expansion led to more preventative measures like colon cancer screening and HIV testing, so loss of coverage may lead to more serious disease among low-income state residents. It also led to less use of emergency room care, which suggests reduction of coverage may lead to more crowded emergency rooms and costs shifted onto the public. Loss of insurance also leads to financial instability. That is the purpose of insurance, after all: to pool risk and reduce financial exposure of people to one of life’s most dangerous contingencies–threats to our health.

Ohio economists optimistic about impact of free school lunch

In a survey released this morning by Scioto Analysis, 14 of 17 economists surveyed agreed that universal free school lunches will improve student outcomes such as test scores and graduation rates, with three uncertain of the impact and none disagreeing with the statement.. This comes after Senate Bill 109 was introduced last month, a bipartisan bill that would offer free breakfast and lunch to all children in Ohio’s public and charter schools. If passed, this bill will cost the state an estimated $300 million.

“There is an abundant body of literature that finds that universal free school lunches not only improve average test scores and overall academic performance (Gordanier et al. 2020 among others), but also reduce suspensions (Gordon and Ruffini 2018)” wrote Will Georgic from Ohio Wesleyan. “While not every student's academic achievement will improve, the average effect for all students will be unambiguously positive.”

14 of 17 respondents also agreed that universal free school lunches would promote equitable outcomes in Ohio’s K-12 education system. Jonathan Andreas from Bluffton University wrote “Universal benefits are more equitable than means-tested benefits because they literally treat everyone the same.  They increase equitability of social status by eliminating the stigma of singling out the needy for special help.  They also increase equality of opportunity by eliminating a high shadow-tax-rate whereby higher earned income can be completely ‘taxed’ away by radically reduced benefits thereby eliminating the marginal incentive to increase earnings.  The tradeoff is that they are a lot more expensive to fund than means-tested benefits, so they are a relatively inefficient way to increase equity.”

The one respondent who disagreed that universal lunch would improve equitable outcomes was Michael Jones from the University of Cincinnati. He considered the impact of providing free breakfast as well, writing: “Encouraging children to eat breakfast at school rather than at home shifts parental responsibilities to government programs. This sends the message that providing basic needs such as food is something families can opt out of rather than prioritize. Parents who value family time together should not be put at a financial disadvantage simply because they do not use a free school breakfast. Families are strengthened when children see their parents taking care of them.”

The Ohio Economic Experts Panel is a panel of over 30 Ohio Economists from over 30 Ohio higher educational institutions conducted by Scioto Analysis. The goal of the Ohio Economic Experts Panel is to promote better policy outcomes by providing policymakers, policy influencers, and the public with the informed opinions of Ohio’s leading economists. Individual responses to all surveys can be found here.

Which state workforces rely the most on immigrants?

With immigration grabbing the headlines in the United States, the potential loss of state workforce has economists wringing their hands. . A study conducted during the election last year as a joint effort between the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Niskanen Center analyzed alternative immigration policies under a potential Harris administration and a potential Trump Administration.

In this study, the three think tanks analyzed what gross domestic product could look like under the two administrations. Under a Harris Administration, their analysis projected anywhere from a tenth of a percentage point increase to a tenth of a percentage point decrease in GDP. That may not seem like a lot, but from a baseline of about $29 trillion, that means about $29 billion either way based on the policy decisions of the administration.

The range of decisions projected under the Trump Administration were even larger. They projected anywhere from a tenth of a percentage point decrease in GDP to four-tenths of a percentage point decrease. That means anywhere from $29 billion to $117 billion in lost GDP under Trump immigration policy scenarios.

While it is yet to be seen how much of a drag the Trump Administration immigration policy with have on the U.S. economy, the administration has doubled down on its commitment to mass deportation policy, suggesting economic losses in the United States will likely be on the high end.

We have posed questions to our Ohio Economic Experts Panel about how mass deportation will impact the Ohio economy. In November of last year, 14 of 20 Ohio economists we asked believed mass deportations would reduce gross state product. In April, earlier that year, 17 of 19 said immigration helped counteract Ohio’s brain drain. If Ohio’s economy drops in proportion to its foreign-born population, it stands to lose anywhere from $330 million to $1.3 billion in gross state product due to mass deportations. This not only means fewer people working for businesses and purchasing goods and services, it also means reduced tax revenue for state and local governments.

The impact of mass deportations will be felt unevenly. From my vantage point here in Ohio, I am in a state that is squarely in the bottom half of the country when it comes to the percentage of workers who are foreign-born (about 6% according to American Community Survey data). Some states, especially some of the U.S.’s largest states, have workforces that are over a quarter foreign-born. Below is a table of each of the states ranked by the percentage of their workforce that is foreign-born.

State	Native Workers	Foreign-Born Workers	Percentage Foreign Workers
California	12,539,284	6,169,684	33%
New Jersey	3,275,151	1,372,134	30%
New York	6,943,299	2,625,782	27%
Florida	7,445,333	2,770,246	27%
Nevada	1,113,674	359,744	24%
Hawaii	520,080	148,152	22%
Texas	11,037,800	3,108,474	22%
Massachusetts	2,905,380	781,084	21%
Maryland	2,476,434	656,236	21%
Washington	3,038,934	742,912	20%
Connecticut	1,483,008	351,627	19%
Illinois	5,107,664	1,143,398	18%
Rhode Island	458,575	96,981	17%
Virginia	3,535,477	721,017	17%
Arizona	2,793,197	545,911	16%
Georgia	4,373,228	758,511	15%
Delaware	415,788	66,278	14%
Oregon	1,788,710	261,064	13%
New Mexico	800,879	110,867	12%
Colorado	2,692,830	359,021	12%
North Carolina	4,409,315	584,177	12%
Utah	1,483,755	190,768	11%
Minnesota	2,666,414	321,281	11%
Alaska	301,929	36,306	11%
Nebraska	921,274	97,389	10%
Kansas	1,318,018	135,752	9%
Pennsylvania	5,735,658	583,997	9%
Oklahoma	1,649,611	160,092	9%
Michigan	4,305,985	406,668	9%
Idaho	825,896	70,409	8%
Indiana	3,045,994	256,285	8%
Arkansas	1,225,421	102,248	8%
Tennessee	3,048,347	252,346	8%
South Carolina	2,206,550	180,895	8%
Iowa	1,509,726	119,703	7%
New Hampshire	691,604	53,760	7%
Ohio	5,336,548	357,748	6%
Louisiana	1,888,719	124,392	6%
Kentucky	1,910,564	122,496	6%
North Dakota	380,463	24,204	6%
Wisconsin	4,488,911	282,363	6%
Missouri	2,806,505	168,685	6%
South Dakota	433,717	23,936	5%
Alabama	2,112,897	115,748	5%
Vermont	321,182	16,276	5%
Maine	657,639	30,537	4%
Wyoming	442,807	19,429	4%
Mississippi	1,206,731	39,930	3%
Montana	524,086	14,728	3%
West Virginia	723,049	16,959	2%

Table 1: Foreign-born workforce by state, data from American Community Survey

California is the state with not only the most foreign-born workers (6.2 million), but also the largest percentage of foreign-born workers, with about a third of workers in the state coming from another country. California relies heavily on foreign-born workers in service, construction, production, and transportation occupations. This means California’s agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and wholesale trade and warehousing industries are heavily reliant on foreign-born workers. California is also heavily dependent on foreign-born workers in its professional services industry. California’s foreign-born population is mostly from Latin America and Asia, with about 89% of the population coming from those two regions of the world.

The state that is the second most reliant on foreign-born workers is located on the opposite side of the country–New Jersey. About three in ten workers in New Jersey are foreign-born, about 1.4 million foreign-born workers in the state. New Jersey’s agriculture industry is not as dependent on foreign-born workers as California’s, but other sectors like construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, warehousing, and professional services are disproportionately supported by foreign-born workers. About half (48%) of New Jersey’s foreign-born population is from Latin America, about a third (32%) are from Asia and most of the rest are from Europe (13%) and Africa (6%).

Right next to New Jersey comes the third state on our list, New York. New York’s 2.6 million foreign-born workers make up over a quarter of the state workforce. Foreign-born workers are actually less likely than native workers to work in agriculture, manufacturing, wholesale trade, or professional services. Foreign-born workers in New York are disproportionately represented in the construction and warehousing industries, but also the arts, entertainment, and recreation industries. Most of New York’s foreign-born population is from Latin America (49%) and Asia (30%), but a larger proportion is from Europe (15%) than California or New Jersey can claim.

For our fourth-most foreign-born-worker-dependent state, we must go south. Florida is the highest southern state on the list with its 2.8 million foreign-born workers making up 27% of the state workforce. Foreign-born workers make up a disproportionate share of Florida’s agricultural, manufacturing, wholesale trade, and transportation industries. Florida’s foreign-born population is heavily Latin American, with over three-quarters (78%) hailing from Latin America. This compares to only 10% hailing from Asia and 7% hailing from Europe.

Rounding out the top five is the first small state to make the list, Nevada. Nevada’s 360,000 foreign-born workers make up nearly a quarter of the state workforce. Nevada relies disproportionately on foreign-born workers in its construction, transportation, and warehousing industries, but notably not in its agricultural, manufacturing, or wholesale trade industries. Where it relies most heavily on foreign-born workers is its arts, entertainment, recreation, and accommodation industry, which employs over a quarter (28%) of foreign-born workers in the state. Nevada’s foreign-born workers mainly hail from Latin America (54%), with a significant minority from Asia (32%) and some Europeans (8%).

All in all, nine states have more than one in five workers born in another country and 24 states have more than  one in ten. Mass deportations will disrupt state economies significantly, especially if they are conducted in large states with workforces heavily dependent on foreign-born workers like California, New Jersey, New York, and Florida. States impacted most severely by this policy will have to make adjustments to budgets, workforce development programs, and social safety net design to accommodate this change.

Tobacco tax increase could save tens of thousands of lives

Earlier this month, Jeremy Pelzer of Cleveland.com reported Ohio House Finance Committee Chair Brian Stewart has said the House will be removing Gov. DeWine’s proposed tobacco tax hike from the state budget.

When DeWine rolled out his child tax credit increase as the centerpiece of his final budget proposal, he assured lawmakers in the General Assembly that he would finance it with an increase to the state tobacco tax.

The tobacco tax is not necessarily tied to the child tax credit. The tax credit will be paid for partially through foregone revenue and partially through payments from the state General Revenue Fund. But the governor was trying to “show his work” that he was balancing the budget with this particular proposal.

Much breath has been lost and ink has been spilled by those critical of tobacco taxes as a financing mechanism. Meanwhile, the most powerful human impact of a tobacco tax took a backseat in the discussion: its ability to discourage smoking. 

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Smoking reigns as the number one preventable cause of death in the state of Ohio. Tobacco kills more than three times as many people as heroin in the state of Ohio every single year. This state has a special problem with it: Ohio has the 4th-highest smoking rate in the country, behind only West Virginia, Kentucky, and Louisiana. The state tobacco tax is an evidence-based strategy to discourage its use and save lives.

A 2011 report by the American Cancer Society projected the impacts of tobacco tax increases across each of the 50 states. In this report, researchers estimated the impacts of a $1-per-pack increase in tobacco tax in each of the states. This would equate to about a $1.44 increase in 2025 after accounting for inflation, which makes this study very helpful for analyzing the potential impacts of DeWine’s proposed $1.50 increase.

According to the American Cancer Society study, a tobacco tax increase would cause 59,000 adult residents of Ohio to quit smoking and prevent 72,000 youth from beginning to smoke in the first place. They also project a tobacco tax would save 56,500 lives by causing people to quit and preventing smoking habits from developing.

In addition to saving lives, the study projected the tax would reduce health care spending. This includes savings of $8.4 million in lung cancer treatment, $20.3 million in heart attack and stroke treatment, $5.7 million in Medicaid spending, and $22.2 million in smoking-related pregnancy treatment savings in the first five years of the program.

Some anti-poverty advocates worry about the potential household financial harm from a cigarette tax. In particular, people who are current smokers and unlikely to quit, especially those who are low-income, will bear the largest burden of the increased tax. To support smoking cessation, policymakers can invest funds toward evidence-based programs like tobacco quitlines and anti-smoking media campaigns. By preventing people from taking up smoking, Ohio can mitigate the impacts of health problems and the higher economic burdens imposed by tobacco taxes.

The tobacco tax is a powerful tool the state of Ohio has to reduce smoking rates, reduce medical spending, and save lives. If the general assembly cuts this program, they will be voting for more smokers and more deaths. On the other hand, if this increase makes its way back to the governor’s desk in June, we are likely to see progress on one of Ohio’s largest public health fronts.

Which states rely the most on federal employment?

With federal workers in the crosshairs of the new administration, the United States’s 2.3 million federal employees have been thrust into an era of the greatest job insecurity they’ve faced in decades.

The federal government is a large employer across the country, but jobs are distributed unevenly across the states. Below is a table of federal government employment by state as reported by the federal Office of Personnel Management.

State	Federal Employees	Federal Employees per 1,000 Workers
District of Columbia	162,489	211
Maryland	144,497	51
Hawaii	24,804	38
Virginia	147,358	34
Alaska	11,658	34
New Mexico	22,695	25
West Virginia	17,301	24
Oklahoma	42,212	24
Wyoming	6,832	23
Montana	11,353	21
Maine	12,717	19
Utah	33,961	19
South Dakota	8,940	19
Alabama	41,319	19
Rhode Island	8,598	17
Mississippi	19,690	16
Georgia	81,366	16
Washington	58,508	16
Colorado	41,167	14
North Dakota	5,736	13
Idaho	10,993	13
Missouri	37,220	12
Kansas	17,824	12
Kentucky	23,449	11
Vermont	3,368	11
Pennsylvania	66,656	11
Arizona	34,460	11
Oregon	20,952	10
South Carolina	24,863	10
Arkansas	14,269	10
North Carolina	51,900	10
Ohio	56,068	10
Nebraska	10,412	10
Louisiana	19,486	10
Tennessee	32,574	10
Florida	95,167	9
Texas	130,686	9
Nevada	13,967	9
California	150,679	8
Delaware	3,998	8
Indiana	24,499	8
Illinois	45,213	7
New Hampshire	5,208	7
Massachusetts	25,698	7
Michigan	29,822	7
Iowa	9,930	6
Minnesota	18,183	6
Wisconsin	17,946	6
New York	54,092	5
New Jersey	22,684	5
Connecticut	7,304	4

Table 1: Federal Employees by State

The top of the list is not a state at all, but the District of Columbia, where about one in five workers are employed by the federal government. This makes sense because DC is the nation’s capital and center of the federal government.

The federal government employs five percent of Maryland’s entire workforce and  three and a half percent of Virginia’s, likely due to their relative proximity to the capital.  These two states come in number one and number three respectively among U.S. states.

Maryland has a range of departments with federal offices located within it. A heavy-hitter is the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, which employs over 18,000 people who conduct, fund, and disseminate health research. The Federal Food and Drug administration, headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, employs nearly 14,000 people who inspect and monitor products and conduct research on product safety.

Virginia is another major state for federal employees. Surprisingly, its largest federal employer is not in northern Virginia near D.C., but instead in Norfolk, located in southern Virginia. The United States Fleet Forces Command, one of the major forces of the United States Navy, is headquartered at the world’s largest naval base. The base  employs over 20,000 people in Virginia. Another major employer is the Veterans Health Administration, which employs over 10,000 people in the state.

Doubling back, the state with the second-highest concentration of federal workforce is Hawaii. Despite having a total state workforce just shy of 650,000, the federal government employs nearly 25,000 people in Hawaii (3.8% of the workforce). This is largely due to naval employment: the federal government employs over 6,400 people for its naval pacific fleet and over 2,100 people for its naval facilities engineering command.

Fourth highest is Alaska, which has about three and a half percent of its workforce employed by the federal government. I wrote a lot about this state in my recent blog post about which states depend most on federal funds. Federal employment in Alaska is driven by two characteristics of the state—its massive landmass and its small population. This leads to a need for federal employees to manage airfields and public lands. Due to Alaska’s strategic position near the arctic circle and its reliance on flight as a major form of transportation, these sectors employ large numbers of Alaskans. The federal government employs nearly 1,800 people in its Pacific Air Forces and over 1,100 people in the Federal Aviation Administration. The federal government also employs nearly 900 people in Alaska for the National Park Service, nearly 800 for the Forest Service, nearly 700 for the Bureau of Land Management, and nearly 500 for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The ranking drops off considerably after the top four (or five if you count the District of Columbia), with the other 46 states having less than three percent of their workforce employed by the federal government. The next four states are rural states with (with the exception of Wyoming) elevated poverty rates. The federal government employs two and a half percent of the workforces in each of these states.

Coming in at number five is New Mexico. New Mexico has about 3,400 Veterans Health Administration employees, but also 3,200 Indian Health Service employees who provide medical care, public health services, and community health support to American Indian communities in the state. New Mexico also has 2,400 Forest Service employees, some Air Force presence, and over 900 employees for its Bureau of Indian Education.

Maryland and Virginia have large federal workforces due to their proximity to Washington, Alaska and Hawaii have large workforces due to their strategic military locations, and New Mexico does due to its large Native American population. West Virginia, at number six, has largely benefited from politics. The 2,000 West Virginians employed by the federal government’s Bureau of Fiscal Services and 1,200 employed by the Internal Revenue Service are largely located in West Virginia because of federal government decentralization in the mid-20th century and adept political maneuvering by Senator Robert Byrd, who was canny at directing funds back to his home state. West Virginia also has drawn some federal employees due to its geography. The 1,000 people employed by the Bureau of Prisons and 900 employees of the Army Corps of Engineers each take advantage of West Virginia’s mountainous terrain for their respective projects.

At number seven is Oklahoma. The federal government employs 15,000 Oklahoma residents for the Air Force Materiel Command, many at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City. Another 6,000 people are employed by the Veterans Affairs Administration and 3,000 are employed by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Wyoming has the eighth highest concentration of federal workers.  Due to its public lands, the federal government employs 2,700 people in Wyoming between its National Park Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management employees.

As the new federal administration aims to slash jobs at the federal level, states closest to Washington are likely to take the hardest hits. If they decide to slash military jobs, places like Alaska, Hawaii, and Oklahoma could face significant hits to their workforces.  If natural lands are in the crosshairs, which they seem to be, Alaska and Wyoming could be hurting. To understand how persistent these employment policy changes are, we will have to see how much these discussions play out over the next few years.

What are “rainy day funds” and how are they used?

When the doors were shuttered at Moraine, Ohio’s General Motors plant in 2008, 10,000 people immediately lost their jobs. The Ohio economy, along with the rest of the country’s economy, was reeling, struggling to make ends meet under the economic strain. The Great Recession humbled the state of Ohio as then-governor Ted Strickland drained all but 89 cents from the $1 billion fund.

Ohio’s manufacturing industry was hit hard by the Great Recession. Instability in the sector led to mass layoffs, business closures, and declining wages. This created a problem for the state of Ohio because of its reliance on income tax, sales tax, and corporate tax revenues — the recipe for a budget deficit.

The budget stabilization fund was the duct tape holding the state of Ohio’s budget together as it stared down a yawning budget deficit. To close that deficit, Ohio could raise taxes, lower spending, or dip into the budget stabilization fund. Without that fund, the pain would have been a lot worse for the state as a whole.

Unlike the federal budget, which can (and almost always does) finance a deficit through borrowing, nearly all state budgets must be balanced at the end of each fiscal year due to clauses in their state constitutions. There is no room for debt, so budget stabilization funds (often colloquially referred to as “rainy day funds”) provide lawmakers with a tool to balance the state budget. Ohio was not alone drawing from its budget stabilization in 2008 and beyond. Many other states in financial straits have similarly benefited from their budget stabilization funds.

Alaska’s reliance on oil revenue hit a breaking point in the mid-2010s when oil prices crashed. To cover the deficits, Alaska withdrew $14 billion from its budget stabilization fund.

In addition to economic recessions, environmental disasters are frequently cited as reasons for drawing on the fund. Florida withdrew money from its budget stabilization fund repeatedly throughout the 21st century to help the state recover from hurricane damage.

Nearly every state tapped into its rainy day fund during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2020   and 2021, California withdrew $9.6 billion to cover the cost of rising unemployment benefits. In 2020, Texas withdrew $1.2 billion to pay for the state’s increased healthcare costs during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The recent budget cuts announced by President Donald Trump pushed Governor Lamont, of Connecticut, to consider alternative funding options for the state’s critical services. Cuts to Medicaid could eventually create a deficit that would require a draw from the state’s $4 billion budget stabilization fund. 

How do states replenish their budget stabilization funds after they are spent down? Ohio faced a steep climb, from 89 cents in its budget stabilization fund in 2011 to a record-breaking $3.5 billion by 2023. By holding taxes steady and cutting education spending while piggybacking off a slow economic recovery after the Great Recession, Governor Kasich’s administration was able to close the budget deficit. 

After the Great Recession pummeled Ohio’s manufacturing industry, the state’s healthcare, logistics, and finance sectors grew. A more diverse economy will help Ohio avoid a steep economic downturn based on any one sector. 

There are currently debates across the country about whether or not states should spend some of their budget stabilization funds on pressing issues like affordable housing and healthcare. Leaders at the Children’s Defense Fund of Ohio, for example, have made the case that the $3.5 billion could be used to supplement social services like funding a child tax credit and free school meals. Others argue that large reserves are the only thing that saved the country from chaos during crises like the Great Recession and the Covid-19 Pandemic. With recession risk on the rise, we might end up hearing more about budget stabilization funds sooner rather than later.

What would it cost to end poverty in the U.S.?

About $168 billion. That’s how much money it would take to get every household in the United States above the federal poverty line. 

We’ve written in the past about the equity-efficiency tradeoff, and the problem of poverty is the poster child of this phenomenon. We could end poverty in this country overnight. The government could appropriate $168 billion and give it to every household whose income falls below the federal poverty line. This may not be efficient, but it’s important to recognize that poverty is not an inherent property of the economy. It doesn’t necessarily need to exist. 

In order to arrive at the $168 billion number, I looked at data from the American Community Survey. I took the total reported income of each household and saw how far below the federal poverty line each family was. Below is a table showing how much money each state would need in order to end poverty.

State	Amount Needed to End Poverty	Per Capita	Households in Poverty
California	$17,214,506,268	$438.67	1,522,399
Texas	$16,001,075,509	$539.84	1,392,305
New York	$11,322,505,843	$569.76	1,032,499
Florida	$11,132,233,232	$507.65	1,044,689
Ohio	$6,567,602,300	$557.52	623,894
Illinois	$6,494,454,210	$511.67	585,786
Pennsylvania	$6,450,478,080	$496.71	604,820
Georgia	$5,926,791,086	$547.63	517,794
North Carolina	$5,742,585,246	$542.55	537,488
Michigan	$5,488,476,066	$546.03	509,788
Tennessee	$3,942,381,489	$564.32	372,500
Arizona	$3,813,769,244	$524.72	325,868
New Jersey	$3,669,825,896	$396.01	343,018
Virginia	$3,654,968,769	$422.17	331,499
Louisiana	$3,483,011,621	$753.73	329,464
Indiana	$3,465,090,635	$508.69	317,271
Alabama	$3,298,573,345	$652.63	312,509
South Carolina	$3,171,156,723	$608.34	289,916
Missouri	$3,112,352,627	$504.58	307,748
Kentucky	$3,074,362,542	$681.57	289,694
Massachusetts	$3,022,624,611	$432.27	298,893
Washington	$2,961,360,328	$382.56	275,446
Oklahoma	$2,482,808,368	$621.44	227,110
Maryland	$2,479,179,167	$401.76	220,848
Wisconsin	$2,477,475,585	$420.48	246,377
Colorado	$2,348,106,492	$404.10	210,248
Mississippi	$2,341,319,924	$793.28	218,010
Minnesota	$2,042,361,857	$357.45	205,570
Oregon	$1,979,543,462	$467.02	190,419
Arkansas	$1,963,917,073	$647.59	189,809
Nevada	$1,664,073,405	$529.79	142,946
Connecticut	$1,554,699,690	$432.06	144,867
New Mexico	$1,472,476,815	$696.28	138,332
Iowa	$1,444,320,891	$451.92	140,178
Kansas	$1,394,899,517	$474.85	131,739
West Virginia	$1,242,770,474	$696.44	121,901
Utah	$1,071,849,227	$321.76	94,327
Nebraska	$806,337,527	$410.16	81,348
Idaho	$732,766,597	$387.03	69,183
Hawaii	$627,510,580	$434.07	48,899
Maine	$568,495,447	$412.73	63,269
Montana	$506,699,776	$458.52	50,764
District of Columbia	$503,804,437	$749.62	40,961
Rhode Island	$499,944,707	$456.42	49,682
Delaware	$437,231,264	$434.68	38,714
South Dakota	$408,104,275	$453.86	37,611
New Hampshire	$388,590,676	$280.00	41,093
North Dakota	$359,985,008	$461.90	35,831
Alaska	$337,041,950	$459.20	24,983
Vermont	$280,263,620	$434.35	28,707
Wyoming	$262,716,316	$453.15	26,480

Unsurprisingly, the states that would need the most money to end poverty are the states with the largest populations. There is a huge dropoff between Florida and Ohio both in terms of the amount of money needed to end poverty and their population. 

Among the states that would need between $1 billion and $10 billion, Louisiana and Mississippi stand out as the only states whose per capita amount needed to end poverty is over $700. Washington D.C. is the only other place with a per capita amount this high, but naturally the population there is significantly smaller. 

If we actually wanted to go down this path as a country, we’d be looking at a price tag of $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years. While this is a ton of money, it’s not impossible for the federal government to raise this type of revenue. If you wanted to do it without raising the deficit, there are programs we could cut in favor of this massive cash transfer.

Every year, the Congressional Budget Office releases a handful of options that could lower the deficit. There are certainly things that could be cut if lawmakers decided this was more important. 

One option would be to eliminate state and local tax deductions. This would save about $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Another option that would get you there would be to impose a new payroll tax between 1% and 2%. This is not to suggest that these particular tradeoffs would be good or bad, it’s just to highlight that eliminating poverty over the next 10 years is not just some pipe dream, it’s a real tangible policy option.

I must note at this point that there are some important limitations to this analysis. First off, while the American Community Survey does an amazing job trying to account for sampling errors, it is still just a survey. One particular group that I imagine is being under reported is people experiencing homelessness (the American Community Survey does survey some homeless people who are currently sheltered, but this is certainly a gap). 

Another issue is that the variable I was using to approximate household size does not always equal the household size that would be used to determine a household’s poverty threshold. From the variable description, the variable I used “reports the number of person records that are included in the sampled unit. These person records all have the same serial number as the household record. The information contained in the household record usually applies to all these persons.”

Despite these limitations, it is interesting to see just how far away we are from living in a world with zero poverty. I should also note that the federal poverty line is not the only measure of social wellbeing we should care about. Lifting everyone out of poverty would not solve every single issue in our country. However, it would solve the problem of people living in poverty, and that is worth something.