For the first time since the Depression, more Americans 75 and older have been leaving the South than moving there, according to a New York Times analysis of Census Bureau data.
The reversal appears to be driven in part by older people who retired to the South in their 60s but decided to return home to their children and grandchildren in the Northeast, Midwest and West after losing spouses or becoming less mobile.
A stream of elderly transplants leaving Florida was detected by sociologists two decades ago, including so-called half-backs, who stopped short of returning to their home states and settled elsewhere in the South. What is new is the growth in the number of people leaving the region and the dimension of that migration.
While the number of people 75 and older who move at all is relatively small, a survey of geographic mobility released last month estimated that about 121,000 of them left the South from 2000 to 2005, and 87,000 arrived. In a comparable survey a decade earlier, 57,000 left the South and 92,000 moved there.
The census defines the South as the 16 states from Texas to Florida, including Maryland, Kentucky and Oklahoma.