Across the country, families are packing up their beloved and settled homes and starting a new life elsewhere. What’s motivating them to go to so much trouble?
The data show it’s politics and beliefs. They are leaving blue states for red states. And married couples are also more likely to start their families with babies in red states.
This is the finding of the 2026 Family Structure Index created jointly by Ohio’s Center for Christian Virtue and the Institute for Family Studies (IFS). They report, “From 2019 to 2024, there has been a steady exodus of families from Blue to Red America – 370,000 families from blue to red states.” In fact, 713,000 married families with children have packed up fromblue states and headed for red since 2008. With numbers like this, it’s likely you know such a family.
That is quite a dramatic national shift and others have noted it previously.
States like Florida, Texas, Utah, Idaho and South Carolina are benefiting from this trend. Husbands and wives are making this move because these states have resisted following crazy policy decisions favored by left-leaning politicians and voters relative to education, sexuality, immigration and economic policy. Affordable housing is another big factor.
As Aaron Baer and Brad Wilcox, the primary principals of this study explain, “In many blue states, especially on the coasts, restrictive zoning and high costs have pushed homeownership out of reach for young families.” They add, “In much of red America, that dream remains attainable.”
Tax policy has also motivated these blue-to-red migrations. Baer and Wilcox observe, “Lower tax burdens in many red states leave families with more room in their budgets, whether for childcare, a good private school or saving for the future.”
The problem with blue-run cities has gotten so bad even liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof admitted the problem in 2024, reporting “the bluest parts of the country – cities on the West Coast – are a mess.” But of course, it is more than just the West Coast. Our state of Colorado, where Focus on the Family and its employees live, seems to be working overtime to run off reasonable people, as The Babylon Bee recently noted.
But it is not only that strong conservative families are moving into red states. More conservative states are home-growing more families. Red states have been shown to be notably more fertile than blue states.
The Institute for Family Studies finds, “From 2019 to 2024, red states saw the share of prime-age adults who are married rise 1.8 percentage points and the share of teens in married-parent families rise 0.2 points; blue states saw both figures fall.”
IFS demonstrates these red/blue differentials here:
Yes, fertility has dropped for both, but it has declined much more starkly among blue states.
Baer and Wilcox conclude,
The Great American Family Sort is more than a demographic shift. It is a signal. Families are making their priorities clear through where they choose to live and have children. The question is whether the rest of the country is paying attention.
They should. As IFS observes, “Americans who put family first are increasingly making their home in Red America.” People are paying attention to what various states are doing with their public policy and voting with their feet … and their moving vans.
