Many Lawmakers Don’t Represent Their Birth States

A new Smart Politics report finds that nearly 40% of U.S. Representatives serve in districts outside of their birth state.
 
Key findings: 62.4% of lawmakers currently serving in the House represent districts in their birth state — 270 of 433 non-vacant seats — with 37.6% born elsewhere.
 
Despite the increased opportunities of mobility of the population over the decades, it is actually the younger lawmakers serving in the 113th Congress who are most likely to represent a district in the state of their birth at 69.8% for those born in the 1970s and 1980s. That number falls to 64.6% for those born in the 1960s, 61.4% for the 1950s, 59.6% for the 1940s, and 54.2% for the 1920s and 1930s.