This study was begun while the author was on a Brookings Economic Policy Fellowship in the Office of Economic Research of the Economic Development Administration. Acknowledgements are due Paul L. Burgess, Richardj Cebula, James A. Chalmers, Herbert M. Kaufman, Todd Sandler, WalterJ Wadycki, and the referees for this journal, all of whom have made helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper and none of whom bears any responsibility for remaining shortcomings.

Research on Internal Migration in the United States: A Survey

In this paper I discuss the economic (and other) determinants of the adverse effect of distance on migration, which is demonstrated by the negative distance elasticity of migration flows. These determinants are sorted and classified into two groups: (1) increasing (with distance) psychic cost and (2) diminishing (with distance) information. I further discuss how aging and education respectively influence the relative importance of these two groups. Using data on flows of migrants cross-classified by age and by education, I estimate the effect of age and education on the distance elasticity of migration. The statistical hypothesis that aging does not affect the distance elasticity whereas increasing education strongly diminishes the absolute value of the distance elasticity is accepted. The acceptance of this hypothesis, coupled with my theoretical consideration, implies that the adverse effect of distance on migration is basically a diminishing-information phenomena.

Interpreting the Effect of Distance on Migration

HE objective of this study is to estimate T the magnitudes in which each of several factors influenced interstate migration over the period 1955-1960. Several variables were chosen which might reasonably be expected to explain the movements which occurred, and multiple regression analysis was used on the data. The most unique explanatory variable employed is the "migrant stock," i.e., the number of persons born in state i (the origin state) and living in state j (the destination state).' It is shown that the failure to include the migrant stock variable in the estimated relationship causes the true direct effect of most other variables to be obscured.

An Analysis of the Determinations of Geographical Labor Mobility in The United States

In recent years economists have become increasingly interested in the apparent self-selection exhibited by economic agents as they participate in market processes Embodied in this concept is the notion that agents choose among competing alternatives at least in part on the basis of anticipated incremental returns Rationality dictates that persons choosing a given alternative do so because they have some tangible basis for perceiving a more favorable return than those who choose otherwise The result is that persons selecting a particular course of action tend to be non-randomly distributed within the population as a whole As a consequence there is inherent "selectivity bias" in data which report relative returns to competing alternatives This problem is recognized as a complicating factor in attempts to estimate returns to schooling, labor force participation, unionization, and migration, to mention a few [4; 12] Researchers have recently addressed some of these questions in the context of econometric models which explicitly account for selectivity bias in wage/income comparisons The problem of labor force participation is considered by Heckman [5] and Nelson [19] The effects of unionization on wage levels have been analyzed by Lee[10], while Roberts, Maddala and Enholm[22] have examined problems associated with behavior of regulated firms Returns to college education are reported by Kenny etal[8], and earnings effects of military occupational training are discussed by Trost and Warner[24] The purpose of this paper is to describe and estimate a model of returns to migration which explicitly accounts for self-selection of migrants from the working population The essence of the problem as it pertains to migration is summarized in a recent survey:

Migration and income: the question of self-selection.

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the concept of migration, selected facts about internal migration in developed countries, and the determinants of migration. In most advanced societies, inter-regional migration is a major mechanism through which labor resources are redistributed geographically, in response to changing economic and demographic forces. The determinants of migration are the factors that affect migration—including characteristics both of places and of persons and their families—while consequences of migration refer both to the performance of migrants in their new locations relative to a benchmark, such as their presumed performance in their former place of residence had they not moved and to the impacts that migrants have on others in sending and receiving areas. The human capital model provides a powerful analytical tool for the study of numerous important issues in labor economics, but this model does not provide a comparably powerful explanation of migration.

Chapter 12 Internal migration in developed countries

Through the use of data derived from a one percent sample of Social Security Administration records, patterns of interregional mobility in the period 1957 to 1960 are explored for male workers by industry of major job in 1957. The data are available for ten broad industrial categories and they are used to explore the extent to which workers in different industries are responsive to the factors of distance and earnings levels when they move between the nine broad census regions. The basic conclusions are: (1) that workers respond positively to earnings and negatively to distance and (2) that the strength of the distance variable is indicative of its measuring more than just the pure costs of interregional movement. It is suggested that the latter may reflect the presence of barriers to the flow of labor market information between regions.

Industry Variations in Geographic Labor Mobility Patterns

The Effect of Geographic Labor Mobility on Income: A Brief Comment.

Three questions are explored: (1) Has there been an upward drift in the full employment-unemployment rate in the United States? (2) If so, what are the causes of such a drift? (3) What are the prospects with respect to any change in the full employment-unemployment rate between now and 1980? The answer to the first question appears to be yes, and the drift apparently is caused by increases in the supply of so-called marginal labor force groups. With regard to prospects for change in the full employment-unemployment rate, moderate real growth rates appear capable of returning the rate to its 1953 level.

Lowell E. Gallaway

Papers

Industry Variations in Geographic Labor Mobility Patterns

The Effect of Geographic Labor Mobility on Income: A Brief Comment.

The Full Employment-Unemployment Rate: 1953-1980.