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No Country for Old Men (Or Women) — Do State Tax Policies Drive Away the Elderly?

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  • Conway, Karen Smith
  • Rork, Jonathan C.

Abstract

Over the last 40 years, state income tax breaks targeting the elderly have grown, often justified by arguments that the elderly move across state lines in response to such tax preferences. Using two complementary sources of elderly migration data and several measures of elderly income tax breaks, we investigate the relationship between these tax breaks and migration. We employ different empirical methodologies that emphasize changes over time, including panel regression models spanning four censuses (1970–2000), and several different socioeconomic groups of elderly. Our results are overwhelming in their failure to reveal any consistent effect of state income tax breaks on elderly interstate migration.

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  • Conway, Karen Smith & Rork, Jonathan C., 2012. "No Country for Old Men (Or Women) — Do State Tax Policies Drive Away the Elderly?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(2), pages 313-356, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:65:y:2012:i:2:p:313-56
    DOI: 10.17310/ntj.2012.2.03
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Onder, Ali Sina & Schlunk, Herwig, 2015. "State Taxes, Tax Exemptions, and Elderly Migration," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 45(1).
    3. Banzhaf, H. Spencer & Mickey, Ryan & Patrick, Carlianne, 2021. "Age-based property tax exemptions," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    4. Cameron A. Shelton, 2022. "Age Demographics and the Tax Mix in US States," Public Finance Review, , vol. 50(1), pages 120-130, January.
    5. Marius Brülhart & Raphaël Parchet, 2010. "Alleged Tax Competition: The Mysterious Death of InheritanceTaxes in Switzerland," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 10.04, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    6. Jeffrey Thompson, 2010. "Prioritizing Approaches to Economic Development in New England: Skills, Infrastructure, and Tax Incentives," Published Studies priorities_september7_per, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    7. Cristobal Young & Katherine Holsteen, 2017. "Model Uncertainty and Robustness," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 46(1), pages 3-40, January.
    8. Johnson, Erik & Walsh, Randall, 2013. "The effect of property taxes on vacation home growth rates: Evidence from Michigan," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(5), pages 740-750.
    9. David R. Agrawal & Dirk Foremny, 2019. "Relocation of the Rich: Migration in Response to Top Tax Rate Changes from Spanish Reforms," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 214-232, May.
    10. Giertz, Seth H. & Ramezani, Rasoul, 2018. "Taxes, Wage Capitalization and the Ability of States to Redistribute Income," GLO Discussion Paper Series 291, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    11. H. Spencer Banzhaf & Ryan Mickey & Carlianne Patrick & Per Johnson, 2019. "Age-Based Property Tax Exemptions in Georgia," Center for State and Local Finance Working Paper Series cslf1904, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    12. Erik Hembre, 2022. "State income taxes and team performance," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 29(3), pages 704-725, June.
    13. Ryan M. Gallagher & Joseph Persky, 2020. "Heterogeneity of birth‐state effects on internal migration," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(3), pages 517-537, June.
    14. Karen Smith Conway & Jonathan C. Rork, 2016. "How Has Elderly Migration Changed in the Twenty-First Century? What the Data Can—and Cannot—Tell Us," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(4), pages 1011-1025, August.

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