Last week, the advocacy group AARP released a study that claimed that more than half of New Yorkers age 50 and older were considering leaving the city when they retire, primarily because New York is so expensive.
The study should not be taken at face value (see below), but my recent work on pensions led me to some statistics that show clearly many people do leave New York when they retire.
See:
Worst States To Retire
Let's start with retirees with pensions from New York state and local governments outside the city. Statistics from the state comptroller's office show that 22% of people collecting pensions (some 91,000) have their checks sent out of state and a third of them live in Florida. The annual outflow is something like $2 billion.
After seeing those stats, I asked the city comptroller's office for numbers on city retirees. The percentage is even higher. Some 30% of New York City retirees or 93,000 have their checks sent out of state. (Only 40% continue to live in the city, although many city workers don't live in the city anyway so we can't assume they left when they retired.) I didn't get data on the amounts.
If government workers who generally don't pay state and local income taxes on their pensions are leaving, others are clearly doing so as well.
As for my skepticism about the AARP report:
Its conclusions too closely track the AARP agenda. Poll results are often shaped by the way questions are asked. The AARP report puts a strong emphasis on utility costs, which nicely dovetails with the AARP lobbying for an independent office to contest utility rate hikes. And I found virtually nothing on taxes.
Historical data. The AARP report lacks historical data. Maybe the 50% figure is less than the number a few years ago, maybe it is higher. We don't know.
Other polls contradict AARP. The New York Times has been asking New Yorkers a similar question for decades: "Looking ahead about four years, if it were entirely up to you, would you want to be living where you are now, somewhere else in New York City, or outside the city?'' Last summer, the Times poll found 63% intended to remain in the city, the highest number in decades except for a brief spike following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Times didn't have an age breakdown but it is hard to reconcile the two results and the Times' consistent polling makes it the most credible.
Nevertheless, there is no escaping the conclusion that retirees leave the state. That's the fact. The debate should be over why they are leaving.
Greg David is former editor of Crain's New York.
