Full Citation
Title: Distances Traveled by Participants in the Great Migration: An Analysis of Racial and Gender Differenences
Citation Type: Conference Paper
Publication Year: 2003
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: Between 1910 and 1970 millions of southern-born Americans moved to the North or West in search of better opportunities for themselves and their families. Given the demographic significance of this event, the Great Migration has been thoroughly investigated by scholars interested in: the push factors that drove the migrants from the South, the pull factors that attracted them to the North and West, and the fate of migrants after their arrival in their destination communities. Yet, virtually no attention has been devoted to the distances traversed during the Great Migration, or to how the distances traveled varied by key sociodemographic characteristics of the migrants, or over time. We use data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) for 1920, 1940, and 1970 to study the distances moved by southern migrants at key points during the Great Migration, focusing on the degree to which the distances traveled by migrants differed by race and gender, as well as by other, selected, characteristics of the migrants. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic, quantitative, examination of the distances traveled during the Great Migration. Results suggest that black migrants were more likely to move shorter distances compared to white migrants across the key points. Further, the likelihood of moving shorter distances increased for women over the period. There is also evidence that the influence of education on distance migrated varies by race, such that white migrants experienced disproportionate increases in distance traveled relative to black migrants.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Curtis White, Katherine J.; Tolnay, Stewart E.; Crowder, Kyle
Conference Name: American Sociological Association
Publisher Location: Atlanta, GA
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity
Countries: