The returns to migration and human capital accumulation pathways: non-metropolitan youth in the school-to-work transition

Francisco Rowe (), Jonathan Corcoran and Martin Bell
Additional contact information
Francisco Rowe: University of Liverpool
Jonathan Corcoran: The University of Queensland
Martin Bell: The University of Queensland

The Annals of Regional Science, 2017, vol. 59, issue 3, No 11, 819-845

Abstract: Abstract The school-to-work transition comprises a critical period of human capital development for young people. As school-to-work pathways become increasingly diverse and complex, there is growing evidence that transitions during this period significantly influence individual career trajectories and long-term earning capacities. For non-metropolitan youth, this period of the life course often involves migration to urban centres in the search for better educational and employment opportunities. Drawing on longitudinal data, this paper examines the influence of migration and school-to-work pathways on entry-level wages for non-metropolitan youth in Australia. Our results highlight that migration from non-metropolitan communities to urban centres leads to higher entry-level wages, but these wage gains are not immediate, rather they are realised at a period 3 years post-migration. Individuals remaining in non-metropolitan communities were found to experience pathways that lead to lower wage returns. Furthermore, unobserved attributes, such as motivation and aspirations, were found to be a major factor explaining the higher wage returns achieved by non-metropolitan migrants. Findings have important consequences for policy in their potential to contribute to new evidenced-based policy designed to entice the return of young people to non-metropolitan communities and ameliorate the long-standing net loss of young population from regional areas.

JEL-codes: I26 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00168-016-0771-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:anresc:v:59:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s00168-016-0771-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://link.springer.com/journal/168

DOI: 10.1007/s00168-016-0771-8

Access Statistics for this article

The Annals of Regional Science is currently edited by Martin Andersson, E. Kim and Janet E. Kohlhase

More articles in The Annals of Regional Science from Springer, Western Regional Science Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().