Do Kansans want to stay in Kansas? Can they?
Most of us probably will. The new “Kansas Speaks” survey from Fort Hays State University reveals that roughly two-thirds of Kansans expect to be living in the same community five years from now — and that another 13% expect to be living someplace else within the state. That’s the good news.
Less good: A whopping 18.7% of Kansans say they expect to be living in some other state five years from now.
That’s just under a fifth of our friends and neighbors who would rather be somewhere else — or who maybe believe there simply won’t be much choice if they want to continue to work and support our families.
If you’ve been following the state’s population trends in recent years, this probably isn’t a surprise. The Sunflower State regularly pops high in lists of “outmigration” states whose residents are leaving, and rural areas have been hit the hardest: Eighty of Kansas’ 105 counties lost population in the 2020 census, and 16 of them lost more than 10% of their people. For many communities here, the story of decline — of young people growing up here, leaving home and never coming back — is long and seemingly inexorable.
But recently something has changed dramatically, and for the worse.
We know this because the 2018 edition of the same survey showed just 9% of Kansans expected to leave the state in the near future. That means the number of us with an eye on the exit door has doubled in just the last four years.
What’s going on?
We’re lousy at providing opportunities for our college grads, for one thing. One recent study ranked Kansas as the fifth-worst state in the nation for retaining degree holders — we lose nearly half of them. The biggest chunk of those folks move across the border to Missouri, but a good number also flee to Texas, Colorado and California.
But it’s not just college grads struggling for a reason to stay. And last year, the Kansas Sampler Foundation did its own survey of 460 Kansans — all of them between the ages of 21 and 39 — and found widespread concerns about child care, housing and even broadband internet.
“The lack of quality child care is keeping young people in rural Kansas from taking jobs or even having kids — and may be pushing them away from rural Kansas,” the report’s authors wrote. “This is not just an issue for parents, but for an entire community.”
The challenges are huge. The state’s future is at stake. Serious-minded leadership is required.
So clearly, you’re hearing all about solutions and ideas to the problem in the Kansas gubernatorial race, right? If so many of the state’s residents are thinking about leaving, surely candidates Derek Schmidt and Laura Kelly are talking relentlessly about how to help them stay and thrive, right? Right?
Maybe not.
Thanks largely to Schmidt, the GOP challenger, the governor’s race — or the TV commercials and tweets about it, at any rate — has been dominated by debates about whether transgender kids should play high school sports and false stories about state-funded drag shows. It is ugly to try to build a mandate for leadership by scapegoating minorities, but it is also incredibly beside the point. The issues that we’re talking about aren’t really what will determine whether it will be worth sticking around the state five years from now.
