People leaving Illinois for Wisconsin

Posted at 12:30 p.m. on June 26, 2017

The Brillion News

MADISON – It isn’t just fishing and hunting that are drawing people from Illinois to Wisconsin

As residents and businesses flee Illinois, the Badger State has become an increasingly attractive destination due to advantages in the labor market, economic growth and business climate, according to “Leaving Illinois for Wisconsin,” a Badger Institute policy brief released Wednesday, June 26.

On net, Wisconsin has gained 116,000 Illinois residents between 2006 and 2017, an average of nearly 40 residents every day from 2014 to 2017.

The study said the key to maintaining this migration pattern is for Wisconsin to continue to pursue the formula that made it attractive in the first place: low tax burdens, less regulation, greater fiscal stability, right-to-work laws and resisting calls for higher minimum wages, according to the brief’s author, University of Michigan-Flint economist and American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark J. Perry.

Perry conducted a state-to-state comparison of Illinois and Wisconsin using 14 different measures of fiscal health, economic growth, various tax burdens, business climate and labor markets.

In 13 of the 14 comparisons, Wisconsin came out ahead. The one exception was the top state individual income tax rate.

See the complete story in the July 4 print edition of The Brillion News.