The Wage Dynamics of Internal Migration within the United States

Jeffrey Yankow

Eastern Economic Journal, 1999, vol. 25, issue 3, 265-278

Abstract: Using an extended panel of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), this study demonstrates that young interstate migrants receive significant positive returns to geographic mobility. Pecuniary returns generally accumulate over a five year period following migration, during which migrants experience superior wage growth vis-a-vis non-migrants. Fixed-effects estimates suggest that migrants collect a post-migration wage premium of nearly 5 percent. Because fixed-effects estimation accounts for correlation between migration and unobservable individual-specific characteristics (typically referred to as "ability"), the positive effect of migration on wages can not be explained by the hypothesis that the migrant sample are drawn from the upper tail of the ability distribution.

Keywords: Geographic Mobility; Migrant; Migration; Mobility; Wage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/eej/Archive/Volume25/V25N3P265_278.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eej:eeconj:v:25:y:1999:i:3:p:265-278

Access Statistics for this article

Eastern Economic Journal is currently edited by Cynthia A. Bansak, St. Lawrence University and Allan A. Zebedee, Clarkson University

More articles in Eastern Economic Journal from Eastern Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross ().