Robin Boyle arrived in the Florida Keys two years ago, enthused about her new job and new life in paradise. Now she's moving to Michigan.

She imagined that she and her husband, who lived in Key West in the 1960s, would enjoy a slower pace before retirement. But the couple couldn't afford anything more than a trailer or apartment. When her husband's medical emergency required a two-hour helicopter ride to a Miami Beach hospital, she knew it was time to go.

"We thought we would love it," says Ms. Boyle, who is giving up her job as managing editor of the Marathon/Big Pine Free Press in Marathon, Fla., for the same job at a newspaper in Hillsdale, Mich. "We just can't afford to live here, but that is happening everywhere. Even doctors can't afford to live here. The whole middle class is leaving," she says in a phone interview.

In a state where growth is booming, the Florida Keys are losing residents. Monroe County, which comprises the Florida Keys, lost population every year between 2000 and 2005, dwindling by 4 percent to 76,329 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

By contrast, up near Jacksonville, Flagler County was the nation's fastest-growing county during the same period, its population surging by 53 percent to 76,410 residents. Across the state, the increase has driven up land values and lured new businesses. 

But in this tropical paradise, the traffic is thinner than in the rest of the state, and at least one elementary school in Key West is expected to close. The islands are also short of workers vital to the economy, including nurses and police officers, says Sonny McCoy, the county mayor, in a phone interview.

What's behind the population drop?

It's not that the carefree flip-flop and bicycle lifestyle of the Keys has lost its appeal, says Robbie Hopcraft, who owns a mortgage brokerage firm and has lived in Key West for 14 years. It's that it's too expensive for most Americans, he says.

The population decline in the Keys is the result in part of geography and growth management. A string of islands offers only so much land to build on. And to curb environmental damage and overcommercialism, and protect residents from hurricane property damage, the state and local governments have imposed strict building codes that have driven up the price of housing. But more worrisome to many residents is an upswing in hurricane activity that battered Florida in 2004 and 2005. Property insurance rates have skyrocketed since then, prompting many to pack up and leave.

The issues the Keys face could hint at what's to come in other coastal areas grappling with hurricanes and escalating property insurance costs, says Maureen Ogle, historian and author of "Key West: History of an Island of Dreams." She points to the 1920s, when the economy in the Keys was dragging long before the 1929 stock-market crash.

"What you see in Key West is a very compressed kind of microcosm of problems that unfold over a longer period of time on a bigger scale on the mainland," she says. "When the price of insurance goes up, it's going to affect a place like Key West a lot faster and harder" because its economy is so dependent on tourism. The Keys draw 3.6 million tourists and generate $2.2 billion a year, according to the Monroe County Tourist Development Council.

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