Duration of residence and prospective migration: Further evidence

A basic assumption of the Cornell Mobility Model insofar as it is relevant to inter-community migration is that an individual’s propensity to move is a function of, among other things, his length of residence in the community. Parameters of the functional relationship of migration probabilities to duration status are estimated from migration histories for a sample of residents in Monterrey, Mexico, and compared with estimates reported by P. A. Morrison using data from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In both data sets a negative nonlinear relation of the probability of migrating to duration status, as well as an interaction between age and duration status, is found. Values of parameters describing the relation within age groups differ sufficiently between the two data sets, however, to suggest that further specification of conditions under which a particular form of functional relation will obtain is necessary if the model is to be useful in migration research.