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Title: How Has Elderly Migration Changed in the 21st Century? What the Data Can - and Can't - Tell Us

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2013

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Abstract: Our primary purpose is to study how patterns of interstate elderly migration have changed in the 21st century. The replacement of the Census Long Form (CLF) with the American Community Survey (ACS) requires us to devise a methodology for reconciling the differences between the two data sources. Design and Methods: Two additional data sources the Current Population Survey (CPS) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) -- that span 1980-2010 aid in our methodology and illuminate if detected changes in migration are genuine or instead an artifact of using the ACS. Migration rates and state-to-state flows are compared across years and data sources. Results: The elderly migration rate may have decreased or increased since 2000 depending on the methodology and data used. Continuing trends include the decline of Florida and the ascent of Idaho, Georgia and the Carolinas as destinations. Unique to the 2000s is Nevadas dramatic fall as a net-importer. Implications: The ACS can be used to create comparable migration data that reveals a continuation of geographic patterns identified in past work plus some new events. Its small number of migrants, however, casts doubt on its usefulness for analyzing annual migration patterns or for small population states. Most troubling, its changed definition of residence and survey timing leaves us unable to answer definitively the basic question of whether elderly migration has increased, decreased or stayed the same in the 21st century.

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Authors: Smith Conway, Karen; Rork, Jonathan C.

Publisher: University of New Hampshire

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Aging and Retirement, Migration and Immigration

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