Full Citation
Title: The Slow Down of Family Migration in the United States
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2011
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Abstract: Over the last forty years, there has only been a modest change in the overall interstate migration rate. However, different demographic groups have seen very different patterns of changes. The migration rate for families with two college graduate spouses dropped from 5.66% in 1965-1970 to 2.82% in 2000- 2005. As for the families with only a college-graduate husband, it dropped from 4.05% to 2.15% during the same time frame. Interstate migration rates for other types of families or singles have seen little change. This paper extends Mincers [1978] family migration model into a search framework and directly estimates the effects of spousal earning difference, correlation of wage offers, and home ownership on the migration propensity. We find that the decreasing difference and correlation of the earnings between the spouses could explain about 50% of the decline in the interstate migration rate for families with two college-graduate spouses and families with a college-graduate husband in the 1980s-1990s. The rising home ownership is the primary determinant, which accounts for about 60% of the decrease in the migration rate of highly educated families, in the 1990s-2000s.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Gan, Li; Zhu, Siyi
Publisher: Texas A&M University
Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS CPS
Topics: Education, Family and Marriage, Migration and Immigration
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