Nearly 4 Out of 5 Pike County Residents Were Born in Missouri
This will add new meaning to the word "homegrown". New statistics that have just been shared that out of all the Missouri counties, Pike County has one of the highest rates of residents who were born in the state than just about any others.
I saw this interesting ranking shared by Stacker. Using United States Census data, they ranked all of the Missouri counties based on how many residents were born in the Show Me State. On that list, you'll find Pike County comes in way up at #14.
The Stacker ranking shows that Pike County, Missouri's population that were actually born in Missouri is 14,374 which is 79.2% of population. Even with my admittedly limited math skills, that's nearly 4 out of 5 homegrown Missouri people.
Ralls County isn't far behind Pike County with 78.2% of its population born in Missouri according to the census data. Other area counties of interest include Shelby with 76.5% Missouri-born residents present and Macon and Monroe counties at 75.7%.
It's impossible to know exactly why as everyone has their own reasons for staying or leaving their homeborn state. One could argue that the higher the percentage means that people who were born here decided they liked it and decided to stay. As someone who has traveled the country, I can attest to the fact that there is no place quite like our part of America and I personally wouldn't want it any other way.