1. Work/Life Balance

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the average full time worker in the US works 8.28 hours per day, with men working 9.05 hours per day on average. Both genders are averaging longer than the mythical 40 hour workweek. This ignores the fact that far more commonly now than a generation ago, households require two incomes to remain middle class. Gone are the days when a single high school graduate could support a family of five on one income. In contrast, expats that have moved abroad are more satisfied with their work life balance. While work opportunities may be less available, many are happy to have made the move due to the quality of the time they get. Work/Life balance is my #1 reason to leave the US.

2. Healthcare

Healthcare in America is famously a disaster and leaves millions of Americans in medical debt, a uniquely American problem. This ranks it #2 on my reasons to leave the US. Instead of all citizens having guaranteed access to medical care, healthcare insurance is necessary and largely tied to your employment. This makes it harder for workers to leave jobs for other opportunities, including becoming entrepreneurs. Opposite the United States, there are many countries that offer universal health care, which ensures high-quality and affordable services.

3. Mental Health

Mental health is consistently raised as the reason for things like the high incarceration rate and gun violence in America, but the country has not made any major moves to fund mental healthcare resources, with limited requirements for health insurance to cover mental health. There are also fewer protections for those suffering from mental health issues from an employment standpoint. Culturally, an attitude of “pick yourself up by your own bootstraps” does those that are suffering few favors. There are many countries around the world for which mental health is taken more seriously at a governmental level and factors that contribute to poor mental health are reduced.

4. Political Polarization

3 in 10 Americans name political polarization as a top issue facing the country. This issue has done a lot of harm to one of the bedrocks of American culture, family. I read time and again children that are breaking with parents or siblings breaking with each other. In my case I’ve stepped back from a long time friendship due to radicalization. While this is not a uniquely American problem, it has become more and more apparent in the United States, especially given the blatant polarization of our mainstream media.

5. Women’s Rights

While there is no nation on the planet with full gender equality according to the World Economic Forum, the United States does not fall within the top 10 countries. I suspect with the overturning of Roe v Wade this year, it will fall farther down the charts. While much is made of economic equality for women, there has been a large focus recently on women in roles of political leadership accounting for only 33% of elected politicians.

Additionally, 81% of women reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime compared to 43% of men. Horrifyingly, 1 in 5 women report either experiencing an attempted rape, or being raped, during their lifetime with 1 in 3 of these being experienced by girls between the ages of 11 and 17. Unfortunately, the US numbers are in line with culturally similar countries like the UK and Australia, though countries like Spain and Portugal report rates of <5%. The fact that this issue is back at the forefront of public conciousness ranks this one high on my list of reasons to leave the US.

6. Gerontocracy

Beyond women having an undersized representation in political circles, Americans in general are represented by an age group far older than the average age of Americans. President Biden will be turning 80 this year, Donald Trump is 76. Nancy Pelosi is 82, Mitch McConnell is 80. The United States is an outlier on this issue, and it contributes to many younger people feeling that the political leadership is out of touch with modern life. Each of these leaders is the age of my grandfather, and I’m no spring chicken myself nowadays. I don’t trust my grandfather to take care of himself, and while I recognize that some people age better than others, it is impossible to avoid the fact that with age comes degradation of memory and physical capability. Until there is more of a representative leadership in Washington DC, I consider this a reason to leave the US.

7. Gerrymandering

Because the United States is a representative democracy, it suffers a relatively unique problem on the world stage of gerrymandering. This process of designing districts in order to facilitate an advantage for one political party over another stifles democracy by shoving the zipcodes with the highest number of partisan voters together to ensure that most districts are overwhelmingly likely to vote democrat or republican, and offer very few competitive districts. If you are a republican living in a democrat +20 district, you are never going to have republican representation and vice versa.

Because most other countries around the world have proportional democracy, seats to their legislative houses are granted in proportion to the total votes. Given gerrymandering and the representative democracy the US has, it is near impossible to vote out an incumbent by getting a new representative from a different party.

8. Discrimination

In 2020, 63% of black adults, and 45% of hispanic adults say they have been treated unfairly because of their race or ethnicity. Research polls also show that those that identify as republican see a lot more discrimination against white and christian Americans than their democratic colleagues. In almost every poll I’ve seen, perceived discrimination is on the rise. It seems this can likely be put at the foot of political polarization mentioned above, but racial statistics do not lie. Being a minority in the United States can be difficult, and even dangerous.

I’m not going to pretend that this problem doesn’t exist internationally. Certainly the more homogenous a culture is, the more likely you are to stick out and potentially be discriminated against. It is undeniable that people abroad see racial and ethnic discrimination as more of a problem in the US than in their own society. While I am not personally exposed to this discrimination, it would be impossible for me to not recognize that others do experience it, ranking it on my list of reasons to leave the US.

9. Religion

While the United States constitution guarantees freedom of religion, Christianity clearly has its influences in much of the law of the land. It is difficult to drive down the street without seeing a call to embrace Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior or a church emblem on a car bumper sticker. It is also difficult to ignore the political effects of this religiosity. For those that are less inclined towards religion, it can be upsetting to see public policy and public education influenced in the way it is by religious ideals.

Depending on where you intend to land abroad, this can be even more of an issue. Islam majority nations have an even higher percentage of people that say religion is the most important thing in their life, and many islamic nations are explicitly guided by religious ideals. Conversely, many European nations have largely left religion behind from a policy perspective, if not entirely from a cultural one.

10. Freedom

Americans are told by the government and many other citizens that we are the freeest country in the world. Freedom in this case is meant to be individual freedom, but these claims ring somewhat hollow to me. Corporate interests have the freedom to flood the airwaves with advertisements and news that are proven to influence people directly. My freedom of mobility in job search is limited by healthcare and medical debt concerns. Young adults are given the “freedom” to financially bankrupt themselves for an education with comparatively little payoff with little to no oversight or protection. In exchange, citizens of the US have a relatively high tax rate when you include the “hidden taxes” of sales tax, payroll taxes, and medical insurance. Additionally there is the…

11. Incarceration Problem

US criminal justice systems hold almost 2 million people in jails, prisons, and other detention facilities across the US territories; a staggering rate of 573/100,000 residents. Additionally, the US recidivism rate is 76.6% within five years compared to Norway at ~20%. Since the 1960s the US incarceration rate has more than tripled, and 37% of incarcerated individuals have been diagnosed with a mental illness. The truth is that the United States imprisons more of its population than any other nation, including those that have higher rates of crime and that due to the privatization of prisons, the companies that run the prisons are incentivised to keep the prison population as high as possible.

Disproportionately, the imprisoned are minorities and those of lower socioeconomic standing. Whereas a low level drug offender may receive up to 20 years in prison for possession of cocaine, the leadership and owners of drug manufacturer Perdue Pharma were not given any sentencing at all for their role in the opioid crisis and instead only paid a monetary fine. Incarceration rates definitely rank on my reasons to leave the US.

12. Police State

With the mass surveillance of citizens, and the militarization of police, the US has more and more become a police state. The awareness of this has been aggravated with the increase in live streaming of incidents with police. Police violence against citizens has always been a problem, but it is now coming more and more into the consciousness of the public as video after video goes viral. High profile cases like that of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have made it into the national news cycle, but US police have killed more than 1000 people in the past year alone and the rate of these shootings remains steady over the past five years. Each of these killings is extra-judicial. Black and hispanic Americans are killed at a higher rate than other ethnicities. Most victims are young, and overwhelmingly male.

Of the 653 people shot and killed by police so far in 2022, 101 are listed as being unarmed, or their weapon status being “unknown”. Further, the US Supreme Court has ruled that police have no obligation to protect you, and in fact police have qualified immunity that protects them from potential crimes they commit in the line of duty. Here is my home state of Arizona, police routinely kill suspects at near double the rate of other states, ranking this on my reasons to leave the US.

13. Personal Safety

The Global Peace Index ranks the peacefulness of countries, a decent substitute for safety. The United States ranks 129/163 at the time of writing. While this ranking does include factors such as nuclear arsenal and external conflicts which may partially contribute to the poor performance, it also takes into consideration other factors such as access to weapons, homicides, violent crime, and violent demonstrations. With school shootings once again being prevalent in the news, many parents are keenly aware of the daily risk to themselves and their children. In contrast, you are less likely to be a victim of violent crime in most of Europe, much of southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and even some South American countries like Chile.

14. Guns

The United States is the only nation in the world where civilian guns outnumber people. Roughly 44% of US adults live in a household with a gun, and one-third own one personally. Despite being the 2nd amendment, the right to bear arms has become the most important issue to some single-issue voters. This voting bloc has doomed national gun control legislation and it seems that the country as a whole has resigned itself to the fact that gun violence is inevitable. In contrast, many of the countries you may want to move to have gun violence 10x less per capita than the US. A major reason this is on my reasons to leave the US is the fact that now schools run active shooter drills, which do not seem to prevent the school shootings, but also negatively impact the mental health of children.

15. Culture

The United States has been described as a melting pot of culture, which I’d largely agree with. There are some strong themes in American culture that some find objectionable. One-quarter of Americans feel the government should support religious values and beliefs. 88% of the current congress identifies as Christian. Economically, free-market capitalism is extolled as the best system, with few proponents willing to grant that the United States already has socialism in some respects. This praise for capitalism has led to the idea that the government should stay out of the affairs of business and lower corporate taxes. This has led to the monopolization of the American economy over the past 40 years, with mega corporations continuing to expand at the cost of the mom and pop shops and other small businesses.

I also think that there is a powerful argument to be made to experience other cultures. If you have not lived in many places it can be very difficult to understand another who has. So for both negative and positive reasons, this is on my list of reasons to leave the US.

16. Consumerism

Roughly 70% of the US GDP is dependent on consumption. In the 1930s and 1940s spending related to World War II brought the US out of the Great Depression. The government promised that when victory came, you’d have a home equipped with full appliances. Mass marketing by retailers and manufacturers and planned obsolescence have fanned the flames of American consumerism. Every holiday has become a consumer holiday. 22% of Americans go into debt paying for Christmas, compared to about 10% of Europeans.

In much of the world, there just isn’t the focus on “stuff” that Americans have. This can result in homes that have fewer “nice to haves” but also has a marked positive influence on mental health by not encouraging the keeping up with the Jones. This reason to leave the US is especially powerful if you are an avid social media user.

17. Privacy

American believe, rightly, that their activity is being tracked by both companies and the government. Edward Snowden leaked documents showing that the NSA has numerous global surveillance programs that target not only targets overseas, but domestically. Additionally, the rise of social media has ensured that private corporations are collecting and using your data as well. Targeted advertisements based on recent conversations or searches, your location in real time (including how fast you’re traveling), even what medical conditions you may have are all examples of the type of data available to both the government and these private data brokers.

The US has failed to pass any meaningful privacy protection laws nationwide in the same way that the EU has. While VPNs can keep you somewhat more secure, this remains a reason to leave the US.

18. Economy

The economic confidence rating is currently abysmal, with 54% of respondents rating their outlook as poor. Economic inequality is also growing, effectively shrinking the middle class. Income growth for the top 5% of families has outpaced growth for the lower 95%. In the United States, the top 1% of earners take home 20% of the income, while the bottom 50% take home only 10%. In Europe, the top 1% take home 12% and the bottom 50% take home 22%. While the inequality is still there, it is less extreme. Europe has also been taking some moves to address inequality, whereas the US seems dead set against doing so.

19. Housing

With central banks increasing interest rates, the cost of borrowing to buy property are reaching their limits for the average consumers. Surging prices over the last few years, fueled by sub-basement mortgage rates, have left the US housing market in a decidedly difficult situation. With the average 30 year mortgage rising above 5% (still a historically low number) and the median home price rising, home ownership is elusive for the younger generations. Add onto that is the skyrocketing cost of rent. NPR reports that the median rent for an available apartment rose above $2000/month for the first time.

20. Cost of Living

The average household in the United States spends more than $61,000 on expenses per year, or over $5000 per month. There are some countries with a higher cost of living, of course, but there are many more with far less. For those that currently live in the US but have a remote working position, it may make sense to move to a lower cost of living country and bank the extra money, or simply live a bit larger.

21. Education

While the United States has one of the most accessible education systems from the age five onwards, there is a marked underperformance of American students in math and science. It is possible that this is the result of spending on education which has failed to keep up with inflation, or it could be that a focus on ensuring every student makes it to college was a mistake. Regardless of the reason, public schools in the United States have consistently been on the decline in the performance of students and many states are fighting for additional funding in order to make up the gap.

Abroad, students are more likely to learn additional languages and be less pressured to attend university if their desired career track does not require it. Additionally, a concern in some US states is flat out incorrect information in textbooks.

22. Anti-Science / Anti-Evidence

Scientific American reports that 67% of biology teachers reporting emphasizing evolution and not creationism in 2019. This is touted as progress. To me, though, the fact that ⅓ of biology teachers are offering creationism as a valid scientific alternative is concerning. Recently, politics have gotten in on the anti-evidence sentiment. Kellyanne Conway framed falsities as “alternative facts” and politicians are learning that often the truth just does not matter to their base.

More and more we hear facts without any source. The rise of Q-Anon. The rise of flat eartherism and other conspiracy theorists, these beliefs are spreading faster than ever. Unfortunately, certain politicians around the world have noticed. Bolsonaro in Brazil and Orban in Hungary are both latching onto the phrase “fake news”. Conspiracy is another of my reasons to leave the US.

23. Not Family Friendly

More than 120 countries in the world provide paid maternity leave and health benefits by law, the United States is not one of them. Unicef identifies three basic national policies that help guarantee the time and resources parents need to support their young children:

1. 2 years of free pre-primary education
2. Paid breastfeeding breaks during the first 6 months of a child’s life
3. 6 months of paid maternity leave and well as 4 weeks of paid paternity leave

In 2017, 15 countries had all three policies. The United States has zero. Additionally, for the services that do exist in the United States, such as WIC, there are burdensome requirements that need to be continually met and attested to. The child poverty rate in the US was 17% in January of 2022 and the child food insecurity measure was a staggering 14.8% in 2020. A lack of support for young families and children born to poor families is the final reason (for now) to leave the US.