Yesterday both the Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch ran results from the Ohio Newspaper Poll, which included several questions on Ohioans' attitudes toward living in the Buckeye State. (You can weigh in for yourself on this vague and somewhat meaningless question ? ?Do you think Ohio is a good place to live?? ?here.)
The good news is that 68 percent of those surveyed consider Ohio either an ?excellent? or ?good? place to live, and 54 percent would stay put (compared to 30 percent who'd move to another state if given the choice). The bad news (and here's where I picture the Family Feud host yelling ?Survey SAYS!?? followed but the loud bad-news buzzer?) is that younger Ohioans are more likely to want to leave (nearly half between the ages of 18 and 29 say as much).
All of this is very reminiscent of Fordham's Losing Ohio's Future study, which surveyed college students last year at seven of Ohio's top colleges and found that over half planned to leave the state upon graduating.
The Ohio Newspaper Poll also found that Ohioans have a reasonable perspective when it comes to comparing the Buckeye State's quality of life with other states': 23 percent said Ohioans have a better quality of life than do residents in other states; 57 percent said there's no difference.
But there are a handful who think otherwise, and I wish the data would dig deeper so we'd know more about the types of respondents that say Ohio is a ?poor? place to live (8 percent) and that the quality of life is worse here than elsewhere (15 percent). Are these respondents those who've never lived out of state and don't fully appreciate Ohio's incredibly low cost of living, easy access to homeownership, etc.? Is this a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side mentality? Do they represent the working class, or unemployed/underemployed, those who've been hit especially hard by Ohio's job losses? Do they live in Ohio's cities or its suburbs and rural areas? Or are they just surly and would respond this way regardless of where they live?
It's probably a mix of all those and more. But one question in particular is revealing: In terms of reasons to move out of state, searching for better weather (30 percent) topped finding a job (16 percent) or better economic conditions (10 percent). Really? Quite frankly I'm tired of Ohioans playing the weather complaint card but overall am glad that responses reflecting more legitimate economic ills pale in comparison. I wonder if this finding diminishes lawmakers' sense of efficacy to fight the brain drain, though. They can propose homeownership incentives or student loan forgiveness for college grads, or do things to make our state a more attractive place to work and live, but three tornado warnings in a week and a half and temperature drops from 90 to 55 degrees in two days? Politicians can't do much about that.
-Jamie Davies O'Leary
