Understanding the Long-Run Decline in Interstate Migration

Greg Kaplan and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl

No 18507, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We analyze the secular decline in interstate migration in the United States between 1991 and 2011. Gross flows of people across states are about 10 times larger than net flows, yet have declined by around 50 percent over the past 20 years. We argue that the fall in migration is due to a decline in the geographic specificity of returns to occupations, together with an increase in workers' ability to learn about other locations before moving there, through information technology and inexpensive travel. These explanations find support in micro data on the distribution of earnings and occupations across space and on rates of repeat migration. Other explanations, including compositional changes, regional changes, and the rise in real incomes, do not fit the data. We develop a model to formalize the geographic-specificity and information mechanisms and show that a calibrated version is consistent with cross-sectional and time-series patterns of migration, occupations, and incomes. Our mechanisms can explain at least one-third and possibly all of the decline in gross migration since 1991.

JEL-codes: D83 J11 J24 J61 R12 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig and nep-ure
Note: EFG LS
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (64)

Published as Greg Kaplan & Sam Schulhofer-Wohl, 2017. "UNDERSTANDING THE LONG-RUN DECLINE IN INTERSTATE MIGRATION," International Economic Review, vol 58(1), pages 57-94.

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Journal Article: UNDERSTANDING THE LONG‐RUN DECLINE IN INTERSTATE MIGRATION (2017)
Working Paper: Understanding the long-run decline in interstate migration (2012)
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