Fig. 4: People are moving to counties with lower population density.

A The population density of the origin (ρo) and destination (ρd) counties of intra-city netflows for New York, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Atlanta, reveal that the majority of the flows occur from high to low-density counties. The size of the symbols are proportional to the intensity of the netflow, and the black line corresponds to y = x. B The fraction of netflows to lower density counties \({{{{{{{\mathcal{F}}}}}}}}\) has a positive correlation with city population when we consider the 46 MSAs with more than 5 counties, suggesting that intra-city netflows to lower density counties are more frequent as the city size increases. We also show the Pearson correlation coefficient R and the p-value associated with the two-sided test of the null hypothesis of non-correlation. C The ranking of the cities according to \({{{{{{{\mathcal{F}}}}}}}}\).