A new analysis has found tens of thousands of people, likely young folks, who live in states with strict abortion bans, are fleeing. The working paper, which is not yet peer-reviewed, was published by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research. It found that since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs decision in June 2022, states with near-total abortion bans have lost more than 36,000 people per quarter. People who lived in single-person households were more likely to move out of the abortion-ban states. The researchers looked at change-of-address data from the U.S. Postal Service.
“The effects are more prominent for single-person households than for family households, which may reflect larger effects on younger adults,” the researchers wrote. The researchers said they also found “suggestive evidence” of people leaving states that were “hostile” towards abortion in other ways.
