Chicago Tribune

AMES, Iowa – If he had his way, A.J. Benjamin would graduate from Iowa State University in the spring and put his agricultural engineering degree to work in Iowa, preferably in his hometown of Whiting.

Though undecided about his future, Benjamin is not optimistic about launching his career at home, nor is he convinced that he won’t be joining the legions of young, well-educated Iowans who head for the exit ramps every year in pursuit of better jobs and more promising fortunes in other states.

“When my friends and I are just BS’ing, we all have some part of us who wants to go home and farm again.” But, the 21-year-old Benjamin said with a shrug, the talk usually doesn’t get past the dream stage because the jobs aren’t there to keep many of them in Iowa.

No state, other than North Dakota, loses more of its best and brightest than Iowa, according to the Census Bureau.

Politicians here have been struggling for years to stem the exodus of 25-to-39-year-old single college graduates, who go to Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas or the East or West Coasts – the trendy areas with bigger paychecks, greater opportunities and more job security.

“We’re trying to put stop signs up,” said Michael Blouin, Iowa’s economic development director, acknowledging that too many young people – about 12,000 from 1995 to 2000, according to the Census Bureau – are blowing right through them.

While Iowa suffers more than most states from the erosion of young people, 32 other states had a net loss of young single college graduates, with some of the biggest losses occurring in Midwest and Great Plains states, according to census data.

Efforts to keep young people home or draw them back run the gamut from offers of free land in Kansas, tax breaks in North Dakota, development grants in Michigan, college debt forgiveness in Maine and, most recently, a proposal that no Iowan younger than 30 be required to pay state income tax.

Gov. Tom Vilsack, who for years has been pursuing expatriates at cocktail parties and luncheons in Chicago, Los Angeles and other major cities, last month announced a $6 million ad campaign promoting Iowa’s quality of life.

If there is a consensus about financial incentives by states to keep their young home, experts say, it is this: Most of these ideas don’t work. In fact, in the face of ridicule, GOP lawmakers in Iowa recently abandoned the income tax break for the under-30 crowd, which would have amounted to about $600 a year.

“You couldn’t rent a garage in New York for that,” Blouin said.

A recent state government study in Iowa said changes in tax policy in Midwestern states “would likely make only a small difference” in stemming the outward tide of young people to more attractive Sun Belt states.

“Many of these efforts are not about keeping them there but pulling them back,” said Stephan Weiler, an economist at the Center for the Study of Rural America, an arm of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Mo. “It’s more difficult to pull people back once they’re gone than preventing them from leaving in the first place.”

Stephanie Sieren is one Iowan who fled to Chicago a decade ago. Sieren grew up on a thousand-acre farm in Pekin and graduated from St. Ambrose University in Davenport in 1990 with a degree in finance. She worked five years for a mortgage broker in Des Moines. She left because she felt she had hit a career dead end.

“I have great respect for my upbringing and the values of Iowa, but there is no economy there,” Sieren said. “No wonder people leave.”

Iowa’s challenge stems from wrenching changes in agriculture, long a big part of the state’s economic bedrock. The number of farms plummeted about 21 percent from 1982 to 2002, falling from 115,000 to 90,000, according to the 2002 Census of Agriculture. Fewer farms mean less need for all the services that used to support hundreds of small communities.

Tom Mortenson, higher education policy analyst and senior scholar at the Pell Institute, said students’ debt loads add to the incentive to leave Iowa.

“They tend to go where the better-paying jobs are because they’re saddled with so much debt,” said Mortenson, who lives in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and telecommutes.

Similar economic comparisons can be drawn with other states, such as Michigan, which has been losing young people to other states. Gov. Jennifer Granholm has launched a grant program for city development in hopes of attracting and keeping young people.

“A lot of these issues are long-term, and politicians feel they have to come up with a quick fix, something clever and unique that makes it look like they are making an effort to fix the problem,” said Kurt Metzger, director of Wayne State University’s Center for Urban Studies, in Detroit.

Even Blouin, Iowa’s economic development director, acknowledged there are no quick fixes.

“You’re talking about a generational transition, and it’s hard to get the political process to pay attention for more than two years,” he said.

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