•April 19, 2017•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

The modern American is restless. He moves around, toward good things like jobs, opportunity, warmth, family members, safety. It has been thus since our founding.

What, if anything, can or should be done about the movement of people out of Illinois?

Illinois has been losing white people on a net basis since the 1970s, maybe earlier, since the home air conditioner made the South livable.

This loss has been papered over by the “natural increase” (births over deaths) within our state. This gave us small population increases, until recently.

According to recent Census Bureau estimates, Illinois (12.8 million residents) has lost population annually for the past three years, 38,000 in 2016, more than any state in the nation. Even the metropolitan Chicago area, with its supposedly ever burgeoning suburbs, lost population this past year.

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