Internal Migration and Development: Comparing Migration Intensities Around the World

Migration is the principal demographic process shaping patterns of human settlement, and it serves an essential role in human development. While progress has been made in measuring international migration, internal migration statistics are as yet poorly developed in many countries. This article draws on a repository of data established under the IMAGE (Internal Migration Around the GlobE) project to address this deficit by constructing the first comprehensive league table of internal migration intensities for countries around the world. We review previous work, outline the major impediments to making reliable comparisons, and set out a methodology that combines a novel estimation procedure with a flexible spatial aggregation facility. We present the results in the form of league tables of aggregate crude migration intensities that capture all changes of address over one‐year or five‐year intervals for 96 countries, representing four‐fifths of the global population. Explanation for the observed differences has been sought, inter alia, in historical, structural, cultural, and economic forces. We examine the links between development and migration intensity through simple correlations using a range of demographic, economic, and social variables. Results reveal clear associations between internal migration intensities and selected indicators of national development.     

Exodus from the California Core: Using Demographic Effectiveness and Migration Impact Measures to Examine Population Redistribution Within the Western United States

Increasingly since the 1960s and 1970s, population migration trends within the United States have been driven by the development of a second western population core. The burgeoning concentration of population along the Pacific Coast has fueled the emergence of a significant interconnected system of western metropolitan areas that increasingly rivals the primacy of the long-established northeastern core. During the 1990s the dispersal of population downward within the western urban hierarchy supplanted a much diminished Frostbelt-to-Sunbelt trend to become the most salient aspect of national population redistribution. The Southern California and Bay Area conurbations are serving as the primary pivots fueling the extension of a western urban subsystem. In this study we use county-level IRS matched tax return data and the newly defined Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) units to explore the recent (1995–2000) flows of U.S. internal migrants within the functional urban system of the western United States. We present maps based on demographic effectiveness and on a new migration impact measure to examine and illustrate the evolving spatial patterns characteristic of current population redistribution across the West.

Increasing Migration,Diverging Communities: Changing Character of Migrant Streams in Rural Thailand

This paper studies how increasing migration changes the character of migrant streams in sending communities. Cumulative causation theory posits that past migration patterns determine future flows, as prior migrants provide resources, influence, or normative pressures that make individuals more likely to migrate. The theory implies exponentially increasing migration flows that are decreasingly selective. Recent research identifies heterogeneity in the cumulative patterns and selectivity of migration in communities. We propose that this heterogeneity may be explained by individuals’ differential access to previously accumulated migration experience. Multi-level, longitudinal data from 22 rural Thai communities allow us to measure the distribution of past experience as a proxy for its accessibility to community members. We find that migration becomes a less-selective process as migration experience accumulates, and migrants become increasingly diverse in socio-demographic characteristics. Yet, selectivity within migrant streams persists if migration experience is not uniformly distributed among, and hence not equally accessible to, all community members. The results confirm that the accumulation and distribution of prior migrants’ experiences distinctly shape future migration flows, and may lead to diverging cumulative patterns in communities over time.     

Introduction: Quality of Life of Chinese People in a Changing World

Asking clients to document their perceived quality of life during and after intervention is a popular approach employed by helping professionals to evaluate intervention programs. In the Project Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social Programmes (P.A.T.H.S.), students participating in the Experimental Implementation Phase and Full Implementation Phase were invited to write reflective journals in the form of weekly diaries to reveal their perceptions and feelings regarding the program and the perceived benefits of the program. Based on multiple studies, results showed that the respondents generally (a) had positive views on the program, (b) had positive views on the instructors, and (c) perceived that they had acquired competencies at the societal, familial, interpersonal and personal levels and their quality of life was promoted after joining the program. Acknowledging the limitations of diaries, the present qualitative findings provide support for the effectiveness of the Tier 1 Program of the Project P.A.T.H.S. in Hong Kong.     

Estimating Ethnic Genetic Interests: Is It Adaptive to Resist Replacement Migration?

Analyses of the costs and benefits of immigration have not considered the dependence of an ethny's reproductive fitness on its monopoly of a demarcated territory. Global assays of human genetic variation allow estimation of the genetic losses incurred by a member of a population when random fellow ethnics are replaced by immigrants from different ethnies. This potential loss defines an individual's ethnic genetic interest as a quantity that varies with the genetic distance of potential immigrants. W. D. Hamilton showed that self-sacrificial altruism is adaptive when it preserves the genetic interests of a population of genetically similar individuals. Ethnic genetic interest can be so large that altruism on behalf of one's ethny—'ethnic nepotism'—can be adaptive when it prevents replacement. It follows that ethnies usually have an interest in securing and maintaining a monopoly over a demarcated territory, an idea consonant with the universal nationalism of Bismarck and Woodrow Wilson.     

中国的人口未来:我们应该如何做出选择?

70年代中期以来,中国的人口学研究有了历史性的进展.但是回顾这近30年学科发展的曲折历程,除了理论研究、学科建设以及实证分析等各个领域在不断的完善中迅速成长之外,十分令人瞩目的是:作为中国人口学发展的主脉之一,一些重大的、全局性理论问题不仅经常引发观点分歧、从而成为学术论战的"导火索",而且它们也始终是困扰人口学界的"难点"所在.而在这些问题中间,有关中国人口长远发展目标及其途径与手段的问题,显得更为突出和典型.     

How Job Characteristics Affect International Migration: The Role of Informality in Mexico

Despite the importance given to employment opportunities as a primary motive for migration, previous studies have paid insufficient attention to the kinds of jobs that are more likely to retain workers in their countries of origin. We use information from a panel survey of Mexican adults to examine how job characteristics affect the risk of international migration. The sampling strategy and overall size of the survey allow us to analyze the effect of employment characteristics on migration from urban areas, which have much greater labor market diversity, and to separate our analysis by gender. We also distinguish migrants according to whether they migrate for work or for other reasons. We find informality to be a significant predictor of international migration. Even after controlling for individual factors including workers’ wages, as well as various household- and community-level predictors, we find that workers employed in the informal sector have significantly higher odds of migrating than their counterparts in the formal sector. The pervasive nature of informality in many developing countries from which a high proportion of international migrants originate may therefore create a constant supply of workers who are predisposed to migrate. Our findings thus have important implications for a proper understanding of the effects of economic development on migration.     

Activism Among Older Women in Quebec,Canada: Changing the World After Age 65

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to examine senior women's involvement experience in Quebec, Canada. Study results are based on a qualitative methodology, and shed light on family history and continuity in the involvement trajectory, diversity in terms of group type and involvement practices, and gender differences in involvement. The meaning that older women attribute to their involvement is also addressed, including attitudes toward feminism. The discussion highlights the extent to which older women's involvement has been marked by their life trajectories, above and beyond their age. In sum, their involvement in the private and public spheres is quite impressive.     

中国劳动力流动的形势及其变化--从历时最久的流动中得到的启示

文章的目的是探索中国劳动力流动的潜在动态变化,并以墨西哥劳动力迁移到美国的案例为类比对象.墨西哥-美国迁移从开始到现在已经40多年了,文章考察了这一时期墨西哥-美国迁移形势的主要变化,显示其如何随着来源地、目标地和迁移过程的因素变化而变化,并将这些因素与可能影响中国人口流动的类似因素进行了比较.     

Changing patterns of Internal Migration 1970–1990: A comparative analysis of jews and whites in The United States

Independently conducted yet complementary sets of data from the 1970/1971 and 1990 National Jewish Population Surveys and the U.S. censuses of the same changes in the internal migration of Jews and whites during the periods 1965–1970(1971) and 1985–1990. Interstate lifetime and five-year migration rates among Jews increased to levels significantly surpassing those of whites. Adjusting Jewish migration rates for the educational achievement of their white counterparts did not have much of an effect on lifetime migration or on the recent migration of the 1970/1971 Jewish population; however, it accounted meaningfully for the migration propensities of Jews in the period 1985–1990. These findings suggest that socioeconomic status has begun to play a larger role in promoting different migration patterns than in promoting ethnic group differences. Further, the direction of Jewish migrations followed those of whites (i.e., from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West); and due to their higher migration rates, Jews have considerably narrowed the regional distribution differences between themselves and whites. I interpret these results as evidence of the weakening role of ethnicity in present-day America.     

How Belief in a Just World Benefits Mental Health: The Effects of Optimism and Gratitude

Past research suggests that individuals’ belief in a just world (BJW) is closely connected with their mental health. To clarify the underlying mechanism, the current study proposes that BJW encourages optimism and gratitude which then mediates the relationship between BJW and mental health as indicated by subjective well-being (SWB) and depression. A sample of 1,200 undergraduates yields results indicating that (a) BJW influences optimism, gratitude, SWB, and depression after controlling for gender, age, income, and personality; (b) optimism and gratitude mediate BJW effects by increasing SWB and decreasing depression. The issues of BJW’s adaptive functions are discussed.     

Book Review The Other Americans: How Immigrants Renew Our Country,Our Economy,and Our Values. Joel Millman. New York: Viking Penguin, 1997. 369 pages. Hardcover; $24.95

Population and Environment -     

全球老龄化的挑战:人口学如何重塑21世纪的世界

前　言1 999～ 2 0 0 1年 ,美国战略与国际研究中心邀请了来自美国、日本、欧洲三大洲的政府官员、工商企业、学术界和非政府机构的 85位权威人物 ,组成专家委员会 ,共同研究了全球老龄化的原因以及给财政、金融、经济和国际政治带来的挑战。最后 ,其中 73位专家就 37项研究结果进行投票表决 ,并于2 0 0 2年 3月发表了政策与改革建议———《迎接全球老龄化的挑战》。此项研究对于开阔中国老龄科学研究的视野、促进中国老龄事业的发展具有借鉴意义。1　 2 0 2 2年 :老龄化的经济衰退光景首先 ,让我从带领大家步入未来时光开始 ,一览全球老龄…