Probably not, since South Dakota has virtually no fracking, and it's right after North Dakota. It's probably related to the Native American population.
California and Texas because of immigration. North Dakota and Alaska because young people move there for high-paying work and then get the heck out after a few years. Utah and Idaho because of Mormons. Nebraska, Georgia, and Oklahoma I have no idea.
Georgia's economy is growing rapidly, especially in the Atlanta area as well as high immigration rates. Oklahoma I assume is from fracking and the energy industry. Nebraska makes no sense to me.
Going to take a stab at Nebraska (from Iowa here, but plenty of random Nebraska knowledge). It's very low density in terms of population for the overall state, but that population is extremely concentrated in Omaha (surprisingly fun city with plenty of jobs) and Lincoln (University of Nebraska). My only guess is that's why.
I was thinking more along the lines of states with large student populations--like Rhode Island. I failed this quiz miserably, although i did get Utah and Idaho.
I'd guess that you only count as "living there" for purposes of this quiz if you identify your home in that state. Many students in Rhode Island come from elsewhere in the northeast, probably return home for the summer, and almost certainly retain their citizenship and drivers' licenses from their home states. I went to college in Boston, but all my census information still said I was from New York (where I grew up) at the time. I don't know anyone who calls himself a citizen of a state just because he goes to school there.
hey hey resident Nebraskan here.... (34 next week) Omaha is where its at. Housing market booming, cool under ground music scene, hip new food joints opening all the time, Great jobs too, the recession never touched Omaha or Lincoln. Maybe that has something to do with it. Also, for those who are not aware Omaha is a pretty diverse city with a large hispanic community and the largest community of sudanese people outside of Africa.
It's interesting to me that the common political mindset is "old people are more conservative and young people are more liberal," yet 8/10 of the youngest states went Republican in 2020 and 8/10 oldest states went Democrat in 2020. I doubt there's much correlation there, but it is curious (to me at least).
I don't know if life expectancy plays that much of a role, as Oklahoma is the only state on here that is in the bottom quartile for life expectancy. Utah, Idaho, Colorado and Nebraska all have pretty high life expectancies, while the other states are average. I think the main reason many of the plains states are listed is that, while many young people do leave, the ones who stay tend to start families and have more children than those in other states. It's just part of the more traditional culture there.
Apparently, they did.