Families hosting weddings near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have 156 florists from which to choose, according to online registry The Knot.<\/p>\n
At each of those businesses, at least one employee who works a minimum of 32 hours a week must be licensed by the state as a retail florist<\/a>, someone allowed to arrange and sell floral designs. It\u2019s the only state in the country that requires such a credential, which includes an exam fee of $114 and a license fee of $100.<\/p>\n Policymakers nationwide have argued the cost of professional licensing \u2013 in this case about $275, including a $60 textbook \u2013 and the time investment to obtain such certification are a barrier to interstate migration, or moving from state to state.<\/p>\n But a new study from Thomas J. Cooke, professor emeritus in UConn\u2019s geography department<\/a>, argues the process of obtaining professional licensing elsewhere isn\u2019t keeping moving vans from rolling across state lines from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. Simply put, people weigh other factors like family and amenities more heavily when considering a switch from being a Michigan Wolverine to a Georgia Peach.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I wanted to get across in this paper wasn\u2019t just that I found no evidence of licensing affecting interstate migration, but also that the body of research that backs this conclusion is weak,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s an argument that makes sense – and to tell you the truth, I was really surprised that we found no effect – but the evidence in support of a connection just isn\u2019t that good.\u201d<\/p>\n ‘Migration is a complex thing’\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Cooke\u2019s study, \u201cOccupational Licensing and Interstate Migration in the United States,\u201d<\/a> which was written with colleagues from the University of Washington and Dartmouth College and published in August in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics\u2019 Monthly Labor Review, looked at data from 2014-16 during which only 1.5% of the U.S. population moved between state lines in each year.<\/p>\n Using gravity models to make conclusions, the study seeks to answer one fundamental question: Is high licensing preventing people from moving into certain states? But, of course, finding the answer wasn\u2019t simple.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has a lot to do with where a state is located,\u201d Cooke says. \u201cIf a state has high licensing but it\u2019s North Dakota, for instance, not a lot of people are moving there anyway because of where it\u2019s located and the fact there\u2019s not a lot of population there. At first, you might think that people aren\u2019t moving there because there\u2019s a lot of licensing, but it might just be the fact that it\u2019s North Dakota. You have to take that into account along with other economic and demographic factors so you don\u2019t reach a conclusion that\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n