SO WHY ARE PEOPLE LEAVING? Every year since 2002, Minnesota has been losing residents to other states. What’s worse: Young adults are leaving in the greatest numbers. My first thought was that the cold climate hurts, and that they should be embracing global warming. But the evidence doesn’t really support that: “About a third of Minnesota’s ‘leavers’ tend to move to the border states of Wisconsin (16 percent), North Dakota (12 percent) and Iowa (6 percent).” Those are all pretty cold places.