Nearly 40 percent of House members don’t represent their birth state, study finds

Thirty-eight percent of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives represent a state in which they weren't born, according to findings released Tuesday from Smart Politics.

In Alaska, Vermont and Montana—which are each apportioned one House Member-at-Large—the representative was not born in the state. And just 18 percent of the delegation in Virginia (2 out of 11 members) were born in the state; 25 percent were born in Minnesota, and 37.5 percent in Maryland.

One might surmise that today's mobile society has contributed to this statistic, but Smart Politics' Eric Ostermeier writes that "it is the younger U.S. Representatives serving in the 113th Congress who are most likely to represent a district in the state of their birth."

The number of lawmakers representing the state of their birth has actually increased over time.

Smart Politics noticed no difference in rates of representation of birth states when members were divided by party affiliation.