Cities around the US are paying people to relocate to their town. Marketplace recently ran a success story out of Bemidji Minnesota. They featured two families who took the city up on the offer of $2500 to cover the move. It seems that is enough money to risk the relocation expenses. Bemidji is getting pretty far north, not to the Canadian border but definitely that direction.
I pulled the demographics just to give you an idea of the landscape and was presently surprised by two things. First- the median age is a lot lower than I would have guessed. (For a generation or more these towns were aging) And furthermore, births are exceeding deaths by almost two to one. This is quite a switch.
Bemidji has a total of 11,917 people and of those residents there are 5,547 males and 6,370 females. The median age of the male population is 25.3 and the female population is 30.8. There are approximately 585 births each year and around 304 deaths.
https://www.movingideas.org/bemidji-mn/
These two families cited the work/life balance, a change of the pace of things, as the reason for moving to a smaller community from Topeka and Phoenix. Of course, the costs across the board are lower, but the lifestyle change is another way of saying they recapture more of their time. They can use their free hours to raise more children, get involved in civic projects, or simply have more fun pursuing hobbies which enrich their lives.
Since many writers and ambitious folks chose to live in the big coastal towns there is often this assumed bias that everyone wants to live in NYC or San Fransisco or LA too, they simply can’t. The reality is that a $2500 bonus will get people to choose a much different way of life.
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