Vertical mobility and community type as factors in the migration of college graduates

Summary Internal migration statistics are generally inadequate. One of the chief sources of this is the lack of direct data relating to migration. There appears also to be a lack of interest on the part of researchers in pursuing the study of the relationship between vertical mobility and migration. This study is designed to determine the relative importance of intergenerational vertical mobility and type of community or place of origin in contributing to the migration of college graduates by using direct mobility and migration data. The study sample consists of 850 employed male graduates of eight private colleges in Iowa between 1954 and 1958. Data were obtained through the colleges and consist, among other things, of information about fathers’ occupations, graduates’ occupations, and the addresses of graduates both at matriculation and at the time of the study. Information about communities or places of origin is dichotomized on the basis of whether they are located in Standard Metropolitan Areas (SMA’s) in 1950 or whether they are located in non-SMA’s (NSMA’s). Upward mobility is treated as a product of higher education and as an antecedent of migration. Hypotheses asserting the existence of associations between mobility and migration and between type of community or place of origin and migration are tested. Associations are established showing (1) that upwardly mobile graduates are more likely to migrate than others and (2) that graduates from NSMA’s are more likely to migrate than graduates from SMA’s. The relative influence of the two factors is determined by partialing the associations between each factor and migration while holding the other factor constant. Type of community or place of origin is found to be of greater importance for migration than is upward mobility. Graduates from NSMA’s are more likely to migrate than those from SMA’s, regardless of their relative mobility. Graduates from SMA’s are likely to migrate only if they are also upwardly mobile.