These are the U.S. cities Bostonians come from — and move to
About 4,500 more people move from New York City to Boston annually than the other way around – but more people leave Boston for Washington, D.C. than arrive here from the nation’s capital.
Those are two facts gleaned from data on migration patterns between major U.S. cities, collected by the five-year American Community Survey from the Census Bureau from 2009-2013. The Washington Post then used that data to find the annual average migration between 11 major metropolitan areas.
From that analysis, we isolated the net addition and subtraction of residents to and from the Boston metropolitan area in the graph below.
Boston adds a net of 4,500 people from New York annually.
The chart represents the net addition to Boston’s population, so bars above the x-axis, such as New York, mean that more people moved to Boston than left. Bars that go into the negatives, such as San Francisco, show that more people left Boston than arrived from that city.
New York, America’s most populous city, clearly stands out in the graph. An average of 14,591 left the Big Apple for Boston, compared to 10,079 making the journey in the other direction. Boston also added population from both Los Angeles and Chicago in the net average.
Overall, though, Boston fares slightly below-average compared to cities in more temperate climates. Boston lost a net of 1,400 people annually to Washington, D.C., as well as about 800 to Atlanta and about 900 to San Francisco. And after this past brutal winter, who are we to say they made the wrong choice?
We also included a chart showing the raw totals of migrants to and from Boston.
The annual average total number of migrants between Boston and other U.S. cities.
The data shows that Boston has the most movement between New York and Washington, sometimes referred to as the Acela corridor. However, although Boston is geographically close to Philadelphia, the two cities have less inter-migration than distant locales like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami.
Meanwhile, neither Texas metropolis wants much to do with Boston. The feeling appears to be mutual, according to the data.
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