You mean the ones with jobs, don’t you? :0)
Well, I thought about that, because I was born, raised, lived, and raised my own children from 1936 to 1984, though economic circumstances relocated me to Virginia for about one year.
Actually, the first ones to leave from the Southern Tier environment were those always vacillating back and forth between welfare and menial low-skill jobs. On the welfare map of these farthest reaches of Appalachia, the color was uniformly dark brown. Many of these people set their sights on getting enough money to move to Florida or California. Heck, Polk County has a rather large association of former residents of New York's Allegany County, that takes over Lakeland's civic stadium every summer for a reunion picnic.
The introduction of the state sales tax during Nelson Rockefeller's early 1960s governorship increased the hardships of this marginally-employed class, though it was intended to help them by taxing items they wouldn't normally be buying, Unintended consequences cancelled any advantages.
No, even the "poorest" suffer from the state sales taxes, to which are added county taxes; aas well as exhorbitant real estate taxes when/if they are trying to keep or own a home, or when they have to pay rent to a landlord who himself has to pay the property taxes before getting a profit.
No, the out-of-state relocation of businesses that hire low-skill workers, that can't survive the New York tax environment, has decreased the available jobs, and forced both skill-challenged and highly proficient technicians to follow the jobs elsewhere.
Like me ( PhD scientist,DE, retired there), the wife that divorced me (BA Ed, FL, retired there), and my four children (son, Mfg Engineer, CT; son, Dir. of MIS for Mitsubishi. IL; son, MS in Civil Eng, IL; dau., BA Computer Sci, VP of PNC Bank, OH) -- all highly trained contributors -- natives of NY State and gone elsewhere).
And who wants to retire to New York?? So the answer is -- no, not even for welfare queens or the homeless, especially in the winter. Only those trapped there still live there. Hundreds of major corporations and their principal staffs have either withered in NYS or left it (Dupont, GE, General Motors, Kodak, Carrier, Solvay, Sybron, Rand, Corning, Raytheon, RCA, drug mfrs, steel mfrs, ceramics mfrs, etc.) leaving only service corporations and garbage collectors behind.