How many people who have moved to Florida from the Northeast during the past 30 years have been ridiculed and snubbed. Even when I moved here in 1997, friends and family couldn’t believe what I was doing. Well now many of those naysayers have permanently or semi-permanently followed me South and the ones who haven’t are begging for a week in my guest room.

The Census Bureau’s figures that were recently released indicate that the populations of big Sunbelt states have increased this past year while parts of the Midwest and Northeast declined. For the 12 months ending July 1, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada all made notable gains in population. Not only is this an important shift in population for these state’s economies, it is also an important change relative to this year’s national election.

For the first time in nearly a decade, Florida gained more people than California this year. The Sunshine State added in excess of 350,000 people, more than 1,000 a day, bringing Florida’s total population to over 20 million. However, the total United States population growth was sluggish at only 0.79 percent, about the same rate of growth as the prior year. In 2007, before the recession it grew by almost a full 1 percent. Some of this lack of growth is attributed to women putting off having babies during the recession when there were 7.6 percent fewer births than in 2007.

And this latest census isn’t an outlier. Since 2010, according to demographer Wendell Cox, over one million people have moved to the Sunbelt mostly from the Northeast and Midwest as noted. And again Cox indicates that the most domestic migrants since 2010 have been in the top three states – Texas, Florida and Arizona. The states losing the most population are New York, Illinois, California and New Jersey, and it’s not just the working class folks leaving. It’s the college graduates who are flocking to the most popular Sunbelt states.

The reason for the influx of people to the South is a lot more than the sunshine and warm weather; it’s all about the economy. Lower taxes, more job opportunity and lower housing costs are bringing in both businesses that are creating middle skilled jobs and the workers to fill them. In addition, a friendly business environment, with fewer union and government restrictions, has made for a lively and optimistic region giving the last laugh to the Sunbelt states.

As far as real estate is concerned, you see what’s already happening to our property values just on Anna Maria and in Manatee County. There is new construction all over the place, some of it slated to have thousands of residents, and the traffic going west is frequently bumper to bumper.

That’s the good stuff – increased property values and more jobs, but how bad can it be to have 1,000 people a day moving into the state where you live? Well, it can be bad on a lot of different levels starting with the traffic and ending with the environment. We’ll know soon enough if our local and state governments can find a way to handle the incoming population to a state where it was once hard to sell swamp land.

I guess it doesn’t matter what happened in the past like the ancient Greek historian Herodotus said in the fifth century, “Prosperity never abides long in one place.”

Updated to the 21st century, what’s really driving the change is not just the sun, but the economy, stupid.