Place-To-Place Migration: Some New Evidence

This paper presents new evidence on the determinants of place-to-place migration in the United States. For understanding the causes of differential migration rates into and out of labor markets knowledge of place-to-place migration functions is of interest for a number of reasons. Given a thorough understanding of gross place-to-place flows one can proceed to calculate net flows; the reverse of course is not possible. There are also other advantages of place-to-place studies: parallelism to micro-economic behavior opportunity to investigate specific origin-destination match-ups recognition of the number and location of alternative opportunities for persons residing in different origins and exploration of possible asymmetries. Following a large body of economic literature the analytical approach adopted regards migration as a form of human investment. Economic variables used in the empirical work exhibit effects in the hypothesized direction and explain up to two-thirds of the variance in intermetropolitan migration rates. However this high degree of explanatory power is achieved only for certain functional specifications involving particular independent variables. Thus the empirical results confirm the usefulness of the human investment approach to place-to-place migration but they show too that the economic factors used as explanatory variables must be carefully specified and measured. Section I of the paper sets out the model justifying the particular specifications used. Section II presents the empirical results. The economic variables included in the model that are found to be systematically related to migration rates are real income measures of turnover in the labor market and actual and average distance. Also significant in a number of the regressions are the amount and availability of non-work income specifically welfare and unemployment insurance benefits. When the functional specification permits the effects of origin and destination conditions to differ a persistent asymmetry is found whereby destination economic conditions exhibit the hypothesized effects more often than do origin conditions. Conclusions are found in section III. (excerpt)