The changing impact of white migration on the population compositions of origin and destination metropolitan areas

Increased migration to the sunbelt and the metropolitan-nonmetropolitan “turnaround” represent departures from long-standing redistribution trends. Although these patterns have been examined from a number of perspectives, their consequences for individual metropolitan areas have not yet been brought to light. In the present study, stream-disaggregated data for the late 1950s and late 1960s are employed to assess the impact of recent migration on the sizes and compositions of white populations in thirty-one large metropolitan areas. Most large northern SMSAs have been experiencing the “new” migration patterns since the late 1950s. They have incurred net out-movements of whites to both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. In their exchanges with nonmetropolitan areas, however, they have managed to retain greater numbers of college graduates and professional workers. Southern and western SMSAs did not sustain losses to nonmetropolitan areas during either period. They did appear to gain both total and high status population as a result of interregional metropolitan redistribution.