Nearly 129,000 residents have moved away from the 13 states that have implemented near-total prohibitions on abortions since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, according to a study released Monday.
Economists from the University of Georgia and the College of Wooster used United States Postal Service change of address form data to determine how many people have moved across state lines since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Since then, nearly half of all states have implemented some form of a gestational age restriction on abortion procedures.
In the nearly three years since the Dobbs decision, laws banning abortion entirely have taken effect in 13 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. All of these states were included in the study, even if courts have thwarted the implementation of the ban, as was the case in Wisconsin.
These 13 states, according to the study, collectively lost 4.3 people per 10,000 residents per quarter, approximately 36,000 residents per quarter.
The emigration rate was lower for states that have imposed looser gestational age limits, ranging from six-week to 15-week bans, but these results were confident based upon the authors’ modeling.
“This study shows that state-level abortion bans following the Dobbs decision increased net migration outflows, highlighting that reproductive healthcare access has a measurable effect on residential decisions,” the authors wrote.
The effects of abortion bans were more pronounced for single-person households than families, which the authors suggest could be because the logistics of moving are much harder for multiperson units who have competing concerns, such as jobs or schooling.
Total abortion bans collectively cost states 57,000 single-person households in the year after Dobbs compared to 11,600 families, according to the authors’ statistics.
The authors note that the economic fallout of this degree of population change “could be profound,” considering how closely regional economies are tied to migration shifts.
If this trend continues for the next five years, the authors estimate a nearly 1% decrease in population for the states with total abortion bans as opposed to states with expressed protections for abortion access.
“It will be important for future research to evaluate impacts on state economies and labor markets,” the authors wrote. “States with abortion bans may face challenges in attracting and retaining workers, especially younger workers who represent future economic potential.”
However, the study is limited because the USPS data only capture moves in which residents formally change their address, which only accounts for approximately 60%-70% of people. The authors write that this likely results in an undercounting of the amount of emigration from anti-abortion states.
The data also do not provide origin-to-destination counts, so the study does not identify where people are moving.
During the 2024 presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump shifted the GOP rhetoric and official platform on abortion to support a state-by-state approach to abortion policies. Vice President Kamala Harris, in her bid for the presidency, labeled these laws “Trump abortion bans” in an attempt to make the issue the central focus of the campaign, which proved unsuccessful.
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It is unclear whether there could be economic implications for state diversity on abortion policy that could disrupt the incoming president’s Make America Great Again agenda.
About half of people say abortion should be “legal only under certain” circumstances while 35% say the procedure should be “legal under any,” according to the most recent Gallup poll as of May 2024.