Houston might as well be considered far west Jackson. 

After moving to the nation’s fourth-largest city in 2021, Jackson native Elizabeth Evans said she’s had an easier time meeting new people because of Houston’s offerings – popular concert tours, Texans NFL games, fitness-driven outdoor functions, Jazzy Sundays in the park. Many of these new Houston friends hail from Jackson State University. 

Evans, 33, is among the thousands of Jacksonians who have left home for other states. A majority of these expats from Hinds County, where Jackson is located, remained in the South – hundreds in Georgia, Tennessee and Louisiana in the last few years.

But from 2017 to 2022, the county saw a whopping 5,500 of its residents move to Texas, according to Internal Revenue Service data analyzed by researcher Jake McGraw at Rethink Mississippi.

“Dallas and Houston are the two biggest recipient locations of people moving out of Mississippi, but very few make the move back east from those places,” McGraw told Mississippi Today.

Evans had never lived outside Mississippi’s capital city, but she’d gotten a remote job in communications for a nonprofit organization and realized she could work from anywhere. 

“I’m a Southern girl to the core, and I didn’t want to immediately leave the South,” Evans said. 

Since 2020, Jackson’s population has declined 8%, by more than 12,000 people, according to the Census Bureau. To be sure, when people leave Hinds County, the two most common destinations are adjoining Madison and Rankin counties, McGraw said, but when they leave the state entirely, Texas is by far the most popular landing spot.

Though Texas is politically similar to Mississippi – Republican state leaders, a six-week abortion ban and growing anti-immigrant sentiment – Evans said she feels like the issues she cares about are amplified in Houston. She has found a community that believes in what she values, such as reproductive justice and voting access. Part of her political awareness began because she grew up in Jackson, a city that she said is plagued with issues of racial inequity and environmental challenges. 

“It’s easier to distract yourself from those things when you are in other places, but I think here (in Jackson), being so deeply connected to people and the landscape of the city, it will certainly radicalize you,” Evans said. 

More than 200 miles away in Dallas, another Jackson native is advancing in a marketing career. Bianca Tatum said Texas has offered her an opportunity to be ambitious with work that Mississippi didn’t. The Mississippi State University graduate lived in Illinois and Alabama before making the journey to Houston, then Dallas.

“Dallas and Houston, I feel like, are safe for Mississippians,” said Tatum, 32. “It’s not so far that you won’t know anybody or you’ll get a culture shock, because Houston and Dallas are a lot like Jackson.”

The similarities are simple – tight-knit neighborhoods, good food and a close circle of friends. But that wasn’t enough to offset the lack of recreation and low salaries for Tatum to justify staying in Mississippi. 

“I think they need to make it more desirable for young people to be there,” she said. “Give us more things to do. Give us more money.”

Tatum said moving around the country opened up her worldview. She’s proud of being from Mississippi, but she said the change of scenery pushed her out of her comfort zone. 

“I’m just grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to develop myself in other ways before taking the route of getting into a serious relationship or becoming a mom,” Tatum said. “I don’t think I would have had the opportunity to meet more of myself before making these big life decisions.” 

The issue of brain drain isn’t new for Jackson. Since the 1980s, when its population crested over 200,000, the number of residents has declined – sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly. 

Jackson native Charles Miller moved back to his hometown with his wife after graduating law school in 1979. Even at the height of Jackson’s population, the capital city made them restless. They moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1982 after Miller found work as an in-house attorney for an energy company.

“I was frustrated,” said Miller, 71. “Everything seemed a little bit slower after my time at Vanderbilt and at Emory. My internal clock had changed. I wasn’t happy in Jackson.”

Since making the journey west, Miller has raised a family, taught business classes at a university and retired. For a brief period, he said he considered moving back to Mississippi. 

“I could not go back to Jackson now. I realized that about 15, 20 years ago,” Miller said. “I go back to visit, but for no other reason. Texas is where I am and who I am.”

Sondra Collins, senior economist with Mississippi’s University Research Center, said in order to combat brain drain, the state has to find ways to attract more young people and prioritize jobs that compensate employees fairly. Mississippi has fewer positions available for people with bachelor’s degrees, Collins said, which means some with a degree may end up taking a pay cut just to remain employed in the state.

“Having a population that doesn’t have as many people with bachelor’s degrees, even some skilled certificates, tends to mean that the jobs that are in the state are going to be jobs that are for people without a bachelor’s degree, without certificates, and those jobs tend to be lower-paid than jobs that require more,” Collins said. 

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show the private average hourly income in Mississippi is $28.10, compared to $34.28 in Texas, which adds up to thousands of dollars per year in earned income potentially left on the table for those remaining in Mississippi 

Collins said while other states also experience brain drain, their populations are replaced by people moving in. For people looking for larger city life, Mississippi doesn’t get consideration.

“We have to land some of those young people from other states who are wanting to explore,” Collins said. “We want them to come explore here in Mississippi. That has to be a bit of a priority.”

Jackson native Adam Luckett moved to San Antonio right after he graduated from the University of Mississippi with his degree in chemical engineering. He and his wife Tera Eichelberger love their neighborhood and its offerings – authentic Hispanic and Asian food, and a diverse community. But they also miss the familiarity of Jackson.

“There was more of a community in Jackson,” Luckett, 31, said. “You feel a lot more connected to the people around you, even if you don’t know them, if it’s a smaller town.”

Eichelberger, 34, said in order to move back to Jackson, she’d like to see more jobs created in the tech field. The city would also need to invest in public transportation and infrastructure. Jackson has long struggled with its water system, from a city-wide outage due to a winter storm in 2021 that left residents without running water, to a federal receivership that led to the system being controlled by a private utility, JXN Water.

“The water situation is something you really can’t stress enough,” Eichelberger said. 

While they’ve grown in their careers since moving, they both agree they would be able to see themselves in Jackson long-term if there were opportunities to earn more money. 

“Your life isn’t going to magically get better because you move to a larger city,” Luckett said.

Since 2010, Mississippi has lost 80,000 more people than it has gained, according to the Census Bureau. Justin Ransburg, who went to college in Texas, is one Jackson native who made the decision to return home. What he anticipated to be a few-month stint ended up capturing his 20s.

“ I’ve always said that I wanted to move outside of Mississippi to see what else is out in the world,” Ransburg said. 

The visual artist and comics teacher attended Texas Southern University, a historically Black university in Houston. He’d only planned to return to Mississippi for six months after graduating in 2012, he said, but once he was home, he didn’t want to leave. He became a part of the local art scene and worked at various galleries. But most importantly to him, he was able to take part in his nieces’ and nephews’ lives. 

“When I actually did come back, a lot of the things that I was looking for that I found in Houston, I found here in Mississippi,” Ransburg said. 

Ransburg said he was searching for more opportunities to create art, try out coffee shops and restaurants and attend events where he could meet like-minded creatives. He found that in the Fondren and Midtown districts, and at one point, he and a friend created a group called the Jackson Drawing Club.

“ I’ve been able to meet people that I wouldn’t have in Houston,” he said. “ As a person, it showed me things that I value more than I realize, and how to care for those things to make sure that they last a long time and also what to let go of.”

People discredit Mississippi’s rich history and focus only on the issues that persist, such as bad infrastructure and homelessness, he said. To him, Mississippi isn’t just the sum of its problems.

“ People need to have their own perception of a place or of people,” Ransburg said, “because if you’re just going by stereotypes or things you’ve heard, it’s like you’re letting the propaganda get to you.”