Map shows where college grads since 2000 were most likely to move from home or school states

Seeking higher wages and better job opportunities, young college graduates have long left their rural hometowns for metropolitan areas. Now The New York Times has mapped the net migration rates by state for college graduates under 40 who earned a degree between 2000 to 2015. Those who grew up in one state, went to college in another, then moved somewhere else are counted as migrating from the state where they attended college.

College graduates moved in large numbers to cities in coastal states, generally in the South or West, as well as Colorado, New York and Massachusetts, Quoctrung Bui reports for the Times. At the same time "Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan and Iowa, and Plains states like South Dakota and Nebraska have seen the largest net losses in younger, college-educated people."

It's not common in many advanced countries for people to move away from home, Bui writes. The U.S. "has one of the highest rates of internal migration among advanced economies, and it has since at least the middle of the 19th century. A study comparing thousands of American and British census records between 1850 and 1880 showed that nearly two-thirds of American men moved across county lines, while only a quarter of British men did." (Read more)