Migration expectancy revisited: Results for the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s

Planners in a variety of situations require an improved understanding of migration trends if services and products that adequately meet constituent needs are to be provided. This note focuses on changes in migration expectancy over three decades in the context of the planning function. Using the CPS one-year migration question for the periods 1975–1976, 1980–1981, and 1987–1991, and the work of Wilber (1963) and Long (1973) as historical benchmarks, migration expectancy is found to have fallen since the earlier studies. Longer-distance migration (between counties and between states) has remained relatively constant over the same period so that these types of moves now account for a larger proportion of total residential mobility. The results are discussed in the context of their value to individuals and organizations who seek a better understanding of demographically-driven demand from services and products.This article is based on a paper presented at the Southern Demographic Association annual meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 October 1993.     

Inheritance, land, and capital mobility linked to labour mobility

This paper presents a two-country migration model, following Galor (1986), in which the world population consists of two types individuals. Individuals with a high (low) degree of altruism give to their children a high (low) level of bequest. Production uses three inputs: immobile land, mobile labour, and capital. Capital mobility is linked to labour mobility since individuals move with their inheritance. The model shows that countries are homothetic in the post-migration equilibrium with equal factor prices and equal densities of population. Migration flows are bilateral and the number of each type of migrants is uniquely determined. In some cases, migration leads to a Pareto improvement in both countries. Received: 8 July 1999/Accepted: 7 April 2000     

The impact of migration on the nonmetropolitan population age structure, 1960–1990

In this paper we examine the short-run impact of migration on the age composition of nonmetropolitan areas. Changes in age structure can have important consequences at the local level, and the influence of migration is particularly notable because it is highly age-graded, with different migration patterns found in various types of nonmetropolitan communities. Here we compare the impact of migration on age structures in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas across the last three decades. Within nonmetropolitan areas we also compare counties with colleges, commuting counties, agricultural counties and retirement counties. We conclude that several factors influence the impact of migration on age structure. Impacts will be greater in smaller than in larger population groups, and in areas that specialize in economic functions that impinge on a particular age group. But in general, migration adds young people to metropolitan areas and older people to nonmetropolitan areas. Differential impacts may be lessened in periods, such as 1970–80, when substantial population redistribution was underway. Nevertheless, prior and present fertility and mortality trends, and the cumulative history of migration well exceed the impact of migration on age in any ten-year interval.Abbreviations Metro Metropolitan - Nonmetro Nonmetropolitan An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Western Regional Science Association, Wailea, Hawaii, 22 February 1993.     

Migration intentions and behavior: Decision making in a rural Philippine province

The relationship between intentions and behavior is basic to micro-level migration decision research. This study, set in the rural Philippine province of Ilocos Norte, provides evidence on personal and structural background factors and value-expectancy perceptions of place utility that predict migration intentions and behavior. Separate analyses are conducted for general intentions to move and for destination-specific migration intentions, the latter pertaining to both internal migration (Manila) and international migration (Hawaii). Logistic regression analyses applied to the data from a 1980–82 longitudinal survey show that the empirical models are highly efficient in explaining migration intentions but less efficient in explaining actual migration behavior in this Third World setting. Important explanatory variables for both intentions and behavior include family pressure to move or stay, family auspices at alternative destinations, money to move, prior migration experience, and the life cycle stage (marital status and age). However, the determinants of internal and international migration behavior are not the same. The data only partially support the Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) position that intentions are the dominant determinant of behavior. Personal and structural background factors are shown to exert independent direct effects on migration behavior.Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 2–5, 1984. Research for this paper was supported by NIH Grant No. R01-HD13115, the Population Center Foundation, The Philippines, the East-West Population Institute, Honolulu, Hawaii, and the Population Issues Research Center, University Park, PA. The other coinvestigators for this project are Fred Arnold, East-West Population Institute, and Benjamin V. Carino, University of the Philippines.     

Demographics and the dynamics of earnings

This paper discusses how demographic changes, in particular changes in cohort size, female labor force participation and migration, influence the dynamics of wage rate profiles. A review of the literature suggests that there are demographic effects on wage rate profiles, although they are usually rather small. Future research should concentrate on second-order adjustments and long-term effects of demographic changes.Presidential address delivered at the sixth annual meeting of the European Society for Population Economics, June 10–13, 1992, Gemunden, Austria. The author acknowledges the constructive comments of Bjorn Gustafsson and two referees.     

Mobility plans and mobility behavior: Convergences and divergences in Thailand

Using Thai data, this paper develops and tests a model of rural-urban mobility behavior in a context dominated by high levels of circular rural-urban mobility. With mobility plans and mobility behavior measured in analogous ways, a close correspondence between mobility plans and mobility behavior is found. In spite of this close correspondence, however, multivariate analysis shows that past mobility behavior—rather than mobility plans—is the most important predictor of subsequent mobility. Where experience with a given type of behavior is abundant, prior behavior may often be the best predictor of subsequent behavior, but where experience with a given type of behavior is scarce, behavioral intentions may be a more relevant explanatory variable.The research reported here was funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations' Research Program on Population and Development Policy (RF 77065; Allocation 164). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the section on migration strategies, migration intentions, and migration decisions at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 3–5, 1984.     

Convergence of a Discrete-Time Age-Structured Population Toward a Given Steady State Through Controlled Immigration

To explore the concept of stability in an age-structured population with migration, a Markov transition matrix model is built, where age classes can be of different length, and the time step is not necessarily equal to the length of the age class. The conditions under which a vector of the model has a steady population structure are identified, as well as those under which the age structure converges to a given steady state, through a series of decisions or controls of letting immigrants in or forbidding them entry into the country. The decisions are expressed as vectors of proportions of immigrants. In the steady state, when the increment of population is proportional to its size, the age- or stage-structure remains unchanged between transitions.     

Migration stock and the issue of competing and complementary flows in United States interstate migration

The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants of interstate migration in the United States from 1965–1970 when a new change in direction of migration has started, and to examine the flow creation or flow diversion that results from migration to some appealing regions. Several related variables have been selected and tested for gross interstate migration flows. The results show that overall both push and pull factors have not been important. People from higher income regions migrate more, and migrants tend to move to states with higher incomes and larger population. Distance was not found to act as a significant deterrence to migration, whereas population density of origin and destination was significant. Previous migration was found to have a very strong effect on migration. The results of the study also suggested that there has been a major change in the location of growth areas in the United States during 1955–1970.The study of concurrent flow showed that the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida combined have positively influenced migratory flow between origin and destination states. Empirical results, however, also showed that California did not have flow creation or flow diversion effects on interstate migration.This research was supported partly through Organized Research Funds of The University of Texas at Arlington.     

Cairo and the changing definition of population and development issues

The goal of the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in September 1994, was to agree on a Programme of Action in the field of population and development which would supersede the Plan of Action agreed to at Bucharest in 1974 and subsequently amended ten years later in Mexico City. The main purpose of the present paper is to characterize some of the principal intellectual and ideological developments of the last 20 years which have had an impact on the definition of this goal. I conclude with some brief comments on the Programme of Action adopted by consensus at the Conference. This is an amended version of the paper I presented at the Seventh National Conference of the Australian Population Association (in a Plenary Session entitled ‘Messages from Cairo’), held in Canberra in September 1994.     

Public expenditures,population aging and economic dependency in Canada, 1921–2021

The slowing population growth and consequent aging of the population in Canada and elsewhere have raised questions of the ability of such populations to provide support to their non-working or dependent, particularly their aged, members. Previous discussions have often been focussed on demographic measures of dependency, but more recent research has shown that, in North American society, the per capita costs of providing public programmes to an elderly member are between two and three times higher than those to a younger member of society. However, these measures have made no attempt to take into account changing labour market conditions. This paper develops measures of dependency to incorporate these latter effects. Calculations with Canadian data (1921–2021) show that demographic and economic dependency in Canada are currently at historically low levels. The numerical results also suggest that the effects of the general increases in labour force participation rates, that have characterized the past two decades, have more than offset the effects of the general increases in unemployment rates, and that future increases in participation rates and, perhaps, decreases in unemployment rates could provide a significant alleviation of the impacts of population aging on government expenditures in the years ahead.     

Immigrants’ economic performance across Europe – does immigration policy matter?

Drawing on panel data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), we compare the economic performance of immigrants to Great Britain, West Germany, Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Austria to that of the respective indigenous population. The unit of analysis is the individual in the household context. This allows us to define immigrants state of integration into the host society at the family level taking into account issues such as immigrant/native intermarriage. Economic performance is measured in terms of the country-specific pre-government income position and change in the relative income position due to redistribution processes within the respective tax and social security systems. Our work is based on the premise that countries may be categorized – similarly to existing categorizations based on the type of welfare regime – according to the nature of their immigration policy. From an economic point of view, a successful and integrative immigration policy should result – at least when controlling for background characteristics such as education – in a non-significant differential between the economic performance of immigrants and that of the indigenous population. At first glance, our results indicate that this ideal is not attained in all of the countries analysed, particularly not in Germany and Denmark, where the economic performance of immigrants is much lower than that of the indigenous population. However, results from GLS random-effects models show that immigrants to these countries improve their economic situation rapidly with increasing duration of stay in the host country. This implies that these countries also do fairly well in fostering in the economic integration of immigrants. Our empirical results further reveal that the substantial cross-country differences in the immigrant/native-born performance differential persist even when controlling in detail for socioeconomic characteristics of the household and for indicators of the state of the immigrants integration, such as years since migration and immigrant/native intermarriage. This suggests that not only the conditions of entry to a country impact on immigrants economic performance, but also country-specific institutional aspects such as restrictions on access to the labour market and parts of the social security system that are related to citizenship or immigrant status. There still is a great deal of heterogeneity across EU member states in this respect. This should be taken into account when working towards the harmonization of national EU immigration policies.This paper benefited substantially from discussions at the EEA 2003 Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, and the EPUNet 2003 Conference in Colchester, UK. We also acknowledge very helpful comments resulting from the reviewing process     

An Investigation into the Cross-Cultural Equivalence of the Personal Wellbeing Index

The Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) is being developed for the cross-cultural measurement of subjective wellbeing (SWB). This paper reports the findings of its utility with the Hong Kong Chinese and Australian populations. An item on affect, ‘satisfaction with own happiness’ was also investigated to determine whether it should be added to the index. Three-hundred and sixty participants (180 per country), with equal representation from groups aged 18–35, 35–64 and 65 years and above, were recruited from each country. The PWI demonstrated good psychometric performance in terms of its reliability, validity and sensitivity, which are comparable in both countries. The item ‘satisfaction with own happiness’ was found to contribute significantly to the scale’s psychometric performance in Australia but not in Hong Kong. Cultural differences in the perception of the concepts ‘satisfaction’ and ‘happiness’ were suggested as an explanation for this finding. The PWI data are also consistent with homeostasis theory, which proposes that each person’s SWB level is maintained within a limited positive range. For the Australian population, their mean SWB level fell within the established Western range of 70–80, on a scale from 0 to 100. The Hong Kong population, however, fell below this range. Cultural response bias was identified as a plausible explanation for the differences between the Hong Kong and Australian samples.     

Altruism and international labour migration

This paper investigates the effect of altruism on the pattern of labour migration in a two-country overlapping generations model. We show that differences in degrees of altruism across countries lead to bilateral migration flows. Starting from the autarkic steady-state equilibrium, restrictions on labour migration are relaxed. In temporary post-migration equilibrium factor prices are equal across countries. We then characterize the unique stable steady-state equilibrium: both countries are populated and this equilibrium is not a Pareto improvement. Some individuals prefer to live in autarky, others in an integrated world economy. Received: 6 July 1998/Accepted: 11 February 1999     

The ideology of population control in the UN draft plan for Cairo

This paper examines the influence of population control ideology on the draft plan for the UN Cairo Conference on Population and Development. It is argued that this draft plan can only be fully understood in the context of the recent history of the population control movement and of the empirical reality of population control in particular countries. The paper focuses on the origins of the ideology of population control in the eugenics movement initially, and more recently in organisations such as International Planned Parenthood Federation. The role of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in promoting an incremental approach towards the wider acceptance of population control since the first intergovernmental conference on population in Bucharest in 1974, is outlined. Despite the serious loss of credibility for the UN, through the association of the UNFPA with the Chinese population control programme — the most coercive programme of its type in history — the UN in the draft plan for Cairo continues to promote the ideology of population control. This paper argues for the need to develop a more positive model of development, which acknowledges the complementarity between the lack of development of poorer countries and their potential for significant progress, and the overdevelopment of industrialised regions, whose future growth is increasingly based on intense competition for shrinking markets.This article is based on a paper, presented to the International Geographical Union Congress at Prague, 21–27 August 1994.     

Is demography destiny? The role of structural and demographic factors in Australis past and future labour supply

Following the release of the Intergenerational Report, the Australian Treasury identified the levers to address the economic effects of demographic ageing as ‘the three Ps’: population, participation and productivity. To date, the first ‘P’, population, has been treated as an exogenous factor, with the common view being that there is very little that the government can do to supplant demographic ageing. Focusing upon labour supply, this paper shows how variation in Australia’s underlying demography can significantly alter Australia’s future labour supply. Although governments cannot redirect the cohort flow component of population ageing, much can be achieved in promoting growth of the labour supply by maintaining or increasing fertility (in the longer term), or increasing targeted migration (in the short to medium term). This paper also decomposes the relative role of cohort flow, changing demography and changing labour force participation on the growth of the labour supply over the past 20 years. Over this period, the entry of the baby boom generation (cohort flow) and increased labour force participation of women accounted for almost all of the growth in the labour force. Changing demography had very little effect. However, Australias future labour supply will not include a large increase in cohort flow (as caused by the baby boomers) or a very large increase in female labour force participation. Regardless of the assumptions used, labour supply growth will be considerably lower in the next and subsequent 20 years, when compared to the previous 20.     

中国省际人口迁移与东部地带的经济发展:1995～2000

本文主要考察了 1 995～ 2 0 0 0年间中国省际人口迁移与东部地带经济发展的关系 ,发现省际迁移人口 (外来劳动力 )已成为推动东部地带经济发展不可替代的重要因素。正是大量外来劳动力的迁入 ,弥补了东部地带本地劳动力供给的不足 ,推动东部地带的GDP增长了 1 0 %以上 ,对东部地带GDP增长的贡献度几乎达 1 5 %。而且在东部地带 ,越是省际人口迁移吸引中心 ,迁入人口规模越大 ,迁入的外来劳动力对推动迁入地经济发展的作用和贡献就越大。     

Urban temporary out-migration under economic reforms: Who moves and for what reasons?

Studies of temporary migration in developing countries often focus on rural outmigration and are preoccupied with problems it may bring to cities. Using a unique data set from two surveys conducted in Zhejiang province, China, this paper examines the other side of the coin — temporary migration from urban places — and thereby provides an important complement to studies focusing on rural-urban migration. The analysis identifies three types of temporary migrations: on-business, economic, and family-related. Using multinomial logit model, the analysis suggests that the three types of temporary migration differ significantly from each other in both their causes and migrants' socioeconomic characteristics; so does urban-urban migration from urban-rural migration. The considerable urban-rural temporary migration attests to the fact that temporary migration is not a one-way process; its positive selectivity further indicates that a considerable human capital flows from urban to rural areas through urban-rural temporary migration, which provides rural areas much needed science and technology and becomes an important facilitating factor of rural socioeconomic development.This article is based on a paper, presented at the meetings of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, August 1992.     

Assessing post-census state poverty estimates

While the decennial census provides poverty figures for states and other subnational geographic units every ten years, their utility declines over the course of a decade. Consequently, there is growing interest in producing post-census estimates for a variety of indicators. This study extends recent efforts to estimate post-census poverty figures for states by producing such estimates using a multiple regression approach. The accuracy of the multiple regression estimates along with recently produced estimates from the Current Population Survey (CPS) are evaluated relative to the decennial census. The mean absolute percentage point error (MAPPE) using the ratio-correlation technique (1.56 percentage points) was somewhat higher than the MAPPE of 1989 CPS (1.37 percentage points) and an average of 1988–1990 CPS data (1.15 percentage points). However, a simple regression technique using data from 1979 to estimate poverty in 1989 produced a set of estimates where the MAPPE (1.37 percentage points) is nearly as accurate as the single-year CPS estimates. Estimates which average regression estimates and CPS-based estimates are more accurate than either regression or CPS estimates used alone. Several suggestions are offered for improving regression estimates.This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, 1–4 April 1993, Cincinnati, OH, USA.     

劳动力迁移对收入分配的影响研究——以重庆市为例

劳动力迁移对收入分配影响的实证研究,可以度量我国劳动力迁移对收入水平提高程度和收入分配不均等程度,证实劳动力迁移可以大大提高迁移劳动力的收入水平,对于缩小地区、城乡之间以及不同人口特征的收入分配差距具有积极作用,稳定有序的劳动力迁移对于经济社会持续发展提供动力。