How Minnesota changed during Tim Walz’s tenure

Students from Webster Elementary School in northeast Minneapolis hugged Gov. Tim Walz after he signed a bill on March 17, 2023, providing free breakfast and lunch to Minnesota students. Photo by Michelle Griffith/Minnesota Reformer.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has hit the talk show circuit in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and is currently on the short list to serve as her running mate, according to media reports.

The sudden, intense speculation about Walz has sparked interest in his gubernatorial record , which began in 2019. One way to illuminate that record is to explore how Minnesota has changed since the dawn of the Walz administration.

The Reformer has compiled a series of charts showing Minnesota’s trajectory on a variety of metrics, before and after Walz, that together offer a birds-eye view of the quality of life in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Caveats abound: Governors aren’t kings, and have limited ability to directly shape the numbers shown here.

Many of Walz’s most consequential decisions, like the response to an unprecedented pandemic or the implementation of universal free lunch in schools , aren’t easily captured in a chart.

Still, the numbers give a sense of some of the ways Minnesota has changed, for better and for worse, since January 2019. We’ve tried to focus on concrete measures that directly affect individual families: kitchen table issues like money, education quality and health, rather than abstractions like GDP or the stock market.

Due to delays in data collection and reporting, most of the charts run through 2022 and capture Walz’s first four years in office.

Population change

One fundamental way to gauge the livability of a state is to simply look at how many people live there, and whether that number is changing.

For most of the 2010s, Minnesota’s population was growing more slowly than the United States as a whole, according to census data. But that changed in 2018, the year before Walz took office, when statewide population growth ran about one tenth of a percentage point above the national average.

The numbers held at that level for several years and were subsequently scrambled due to the pandemic . By 2022, when comparable numbers were again available for both the U.S. and Minnesota, both had fallen sharply.

One reason Minnesota’s population growth has slowed is that more people are now moving away from the state than into it, a trend that’s apparent in many other cold, northern states. Earlier this year the Walz administration announced efforts to turn those numbers around.

Life and death

Minnesota has traditionally scored high on measures of public health. It has one of the nation’s highest life expectancies , for instance, indicating that residents live relatively long, healthy lives.

One aspect of this: Minnesotans are considerably less likely to die in any year, of any given cause, than people in most other states. In 2022 our age-adjusted mortality rate was roughly 710 deaths per 100,000 population, about 11% lower than the national average.

Minnesotans were also less likely to die during the pandemic than people elsewhere. From 2019 to 2021, the nationwide mortality rate rose an astonishing 23%, according to CDC data. The increase here was a more modest (but still alarming) 16%.

The economy

Politicians are often graded on how well the economy performs during their tenure, which is unfortunate because most economic indicators are well beyond their control .

Nonetheless, it’s worth noting that Minnesotans enjoy a significant earnings premium over the average American, and that that premium has grown under Walz. In 2018, the year before he was elected, the typical Minnesota household earned roughly 13% more than the median American one, according to census data analyzed by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

By 2022 that advantage had jumped to 21%, largely due to a strong income rebound in Minnesota after several years of inflation-adjusted decline.

Public safety

Minnesota’s violent crime rate — a composite measure including homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — shot up precipitously starting in 2020. The causes aren’t entirely clear, but the pandemic seems to have led to a rise in antisocial behavior, while the police killing of George Floyd and the rioting and unrest that followed drove subsequent upheavals in policing.

Total violent crime in the U.S. did not follow a similar trend, although most of the country did see a major spike in homicides , which account for a small fraction of violent crime totals.

Nevertheless, violent crime in Minnesota remains well below the U.S. average and has fallen sharply since peaking in 2021 .

Schools

Schools across the United States have recorded declines in academic achievement since the profound disruption of the pandemic. Minnesota’s schools are no exception.

Minnesota students’ scores remain above national averages, although the long-term data shows that the advantage has narrowed since the mid-2010s. Minnesota school districts, particularly those in the Twin Cities, struggle with high rates of racial segregation and student absenteeism .

Minnesota has slipped in national rankings of education quality. In 2015 the Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked the state 6th overall in the U.S. on education quality. By 2024 Minnesota had fallen to 19th place . The Walz administration and DFL-controlled Legislature have worked to provide more state aid to schools , but much of that money is likely to be absorbed by new mandates.

Social capital

Civic engagement is key to a functioning democracy and Minnesota consistently ranks high on those measures. The state’s voter participation rate is one of the highest in the nation, although it ebbs during non-presidential election years along with the rest of the U.S.

One vivid illustration of this: Minnesota’s voter participation rate in the off-year of 2022 was higher than the national rate during the 2016 presidential election. In 2023, Walz signed sweeping legislation aimed at broadening ballot access even further.

The environment

While carbon dioxide emissions fell across the board during the pandemic, Minnesota’s drop was slightly steeper than the national average. The Walz administration has made green energy a priority, mandating, among other things, a transition to 100% carbon-free energy by 2040 .