LAWRENCE, Kansas — More than any other populace on Earth, Americans are on the move. Because of factors such as employment, climate or retirement, 14 percent of the U.S. population bounces from place to place every year. Now, one researcher at the University of Kansas has made a vital study of how a population in perpetual motion impacts local tax bases and economies around the nation. Art Hall, executive director of the Center for Applied Economics at the KU School of Business, said he uncovered three key themes to American population shifts by looking at annual data collected by the Internal Revenue Service on county-to-county migration: He found that * Populations are relocating to coastal areas (with the major exception that inhabitants for the first time are taking flight from California’s prohibitively priced seaboard) * People are moving out from major metropolises to smaller cities * The general migration trend in the U.S. now is eastward rather than westward ‘California has been losing people for at least a decade,’ Hall said. ‘Two patterns of migration are under way in California. People are leaving […]