Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Sources of geographic mobility among professional workers: A multivariate analysis

  • Published:
Demography

Resumen

Utilizando una muestra del uno por mil del Censo de Población de 1960, se investiga en este estudio los determinantes de la movilidad geográfica entre profesionales, técnicos y otros trabajadores. El análisis de regresión revela que la edad es uno de los factores que más influyen en la varianza de movilidad, seguida por el ingreso, educación, localización regional, sexo, tamaño de la familia, y estado mental. Otras variables adicionales—clase de trabajador, raza, nacionalidad, tipo profesional, tamaño del lugar e industria—no agregan incrementos significativos a la variación explicada.

Más específicamente, el bajo ingreso económico y la educación superior estimulan la movilidad, los incrementos en el tamaño de la familia y la edad la desalientan. Los profesionales jóvenes casados son los que se movilizan más y más lejos, los hombres algo más que las mujeres. La movilidad es mayor en el oeste, y menor en el noreste. La edad reduce o invierte los contrastes entre solteros y casados, familias grandes y pequeñas, ingresos elevados y bajos, poca y bastante educación y entre residentes del este y oeste.

El análisis factorial sugiere que la migración es parte de dos procesos ordenados: movilidad según la actividad ocupacional y ciclo de vida familiar. Se considera la influencia de estos hallazgos sobre la relación entre movilidad geográfica e integración social en la clase media en los Estados Unidos.

Summary

Using the 1960 Census of Population one-in-a-thousand sample, this study investigates determinants of geographic mobility among professional, technical, and kindred workers. Multiple regression analysis reveals that age accounts for most of the explained variance in mobility, followed by income, education, regional location, sex, family size, and marital status. Additional variables—class of worker, race, nativity, professional type, size of place and industry—add no significant increments to explained variance.

More specifically, low income and high education stimulate mobility and increases in family size and age slacken it. Young married professionals move the most and farthest, males somewhat more than females. Mobility is greatest in the West, least in the Northeast. Age reduces or reverses contrasts between single and married, large and small families, high and low incomes, little and much education, and residents of East and West.

Factor analysis suggests that migration is part of two orderly processes—occupational career mobility and family life cycle. The bearing of these findings on the relationship between geographic mobility and social integration for the middleclass in the United States is considered.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

References

  1. See, e.g., Dudley Kirk, “Some Reflections on American Demography in the Nineteen Sixties,” Population Index, XXIV (October, 1960), 307; William Petersen, The Politics of Population (New York: Anchor Books, 1965), pp. 291-92; Ralph Thomlinson, Population DynamiC8 (New York: Random House, 1965), p, 211; Omer R. Galle and Karl E. Taeuber, “Metropolitan Migration and Intervening Opportunities,” AmericanSociological Review, XXXI (February, 1966),

    Google Scholar 

  2. See Howard Stambler, “Manpower Needs in 1975: Detailed Projections of Occupational Requirements in the Next Decade,” Monthly Labor Review, LXXXVIII (April, 1965), 378–83; Manpower Report of the President, March, 1965 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1965), pp. 52–54; National Science Foundation, Scientific and Technical Manpower Resources, NSF 64–28 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1964), pp. 7–14. Mathematicians increased by 348 percent, electrical and electronic technicians by 680 percent. Figures are from United States Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Population, 1960: Detailed Characteristics—United States Summary, Final Report PC(1)-1D (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1963), p. 522.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Peter H. Rossi, Why People Move (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957), and Nelson Foote et al., Housing Choices and Housing Constraints (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Arlene S. Holen, “Effects of Professional Licensing Arrangements on Interstate Labor Mobility and Resource Allocation,” Journal of Political Economy, LXXIII (October, 1965), 492–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. C. Horace Hamilton, “Educational Selectivity of Migration from Farm to Urban and to Other Nonfarm Communities,” in Mobility and Mental Health, ed. Mildred B. Kantor (Spring-field, Ill.: Charles Thomas, 1965), pp. 166–95; Elizabeth M. Suval and C. Horace Hamilton, “Some New Evidence on Educational Selectivity in Migration to and from the South,” Social Forces, XLIII (May, 1965), 536–47; and Henry S. Shryock, Jr., and Charles B. Nam, “Educational Selectivity of Interregional Migration,” Social Forces, XL (March, 1965), 299–310.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Samuel Saben, “Geographic Mobility and Employment Status, March 1962–March 1963,” Special Labor Force Report No. 44 (U.S. Department of Labor, August, 1964), and John B. Lansing et al., The Geographic Mobility of Labor: A First Report (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Survey Research Center, 1963).

  7. Discussions of mobility concepts and operationalizations are contained in Henry S. Shryock, Jr., Population Mobility within the United States (Chicago: Community and Family Study Center, 1964), chap. ii, and Donald J. Bogue, “Internal Migration,” in The Study of Population, ed. Philip M. Hauser and Otis Dudley Duncan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 486–509. Accuracy estimates of mobility data are reported in United States Bureau of the Census, Evaluation and Research Program of the U.S. Censuses of Population and Housing, 1960: Accuracy of Data on Population Characteristics as Measured by Reinterviews (Series ER 60, No.4, Washington, D.C., 1964).

    Google Scholar 

  8. The method is described in M. A. Efroymson, “Multiple Regression Analysis,” in Mathematical Methods for Digital Computers, ed. Anthony Ralston and Herbert S. Wilf (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960), pp. 191–203. Stepwise multiple regression is particularly suitable for geographic mobility data. See C. Horace Hamilton’s discussion of James D. Tarver and William R. Gurley, “The Relationship of Selected Variables with County Net Migration Rates in the United States, 1950 to 1960,” Rural Sociology, XXX (March, 1965), 16. Multiple regression analysis has been used in a number of other mobility studies but generally with aggregate data, not individual cases. See C. Horace Hamilton, “Population Pressure and Other Factors Affecting Net Rural-Urban Migration,” Social Forces, XXX (December, 1951), 209–15; Donald J. Bogue, Henry S. Shryock, Jr., and Siegfried A. Hoermann, Subregional Migration in the United States, 1935–40, Vol. I: Streams of Migration between Subregions (Oxford, Ohio: Scripps Foundation Studies in Population Distribution, No.5, 1957); James D. Tarver, “Predicting Migration,” Social Forces, XXXIX (March, 1961), 207–13, and “Occupational Migration Differentials”; and Tarver and Gurley, op. cit., James D. Tarver and William R. Gurley, “The Relationship of Selected Variables with County Net Migration Rates in the United States, 1950 to 1960,” Rural Sociology, XXX (March, 1965), pp. 3–13.

    Google Scholar 

  9. For details see Alexander M. Carr-Saunders, “Metropolitan Conditions and Traditional Professional Relationships,” in The Metropolis in Modern Life, ed. Robert M. Fisher (New York: Doubleday, 1955), pp. 28–81, and Albert J. Reiss, Jr., “Occupational Mobility of Professional Workers,” American Sociological Review, XX (December, 1955), 693–700. Analysis of migration by professional type is presented in my “Occupational Determinants of Geographic Mobility among Professional Workers,” May, 1966 (dittoed). The list of professional occupations in each category is given there (Table 3).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Dorothy Swaine Thomas, “Age and Economic Differentials in Interstate Migration,” Population Index, XXIV (October, 1958), 313–24. James D. Tarver, “Interstate Migration Differentials,” American Sociological Review, XXVIII (June, 1963), 448–51; Donald Bogue, The Population of the United States (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959), pp. 379–81, 413–17.

    Google Scholar 

  11. See Bogue, The Population of the United States, pp. 387, 415. Saben reports that among family heads, aged 18–64, in the 1962–63 Current Population Survey, “The presence of children under 18 did not appear to hamper migration” (Saben, op. cit., Samuel Saben, “Geographic Mobility and Employment Status, March 1962–March 1963,” Special Labor Force Report No. 44 (U.S. Department of Labor, August, 1964), p. 875).

  12. Bogue, The Population of the United States, p. 416.

  13. Bogue, The Population of the United States, p. 416.

  14. For a discussion of these trends see especially Calvin L. Beale and Donald J. Bogue, “Recent Population Trends in the United States with Emphasis on Rural Areas,” Agricultural Economic Report No. 23 (United States Department of Agriculture, 1963); and Shryock, Population Mobility within the United States, chap. vi.

  15. Lindsey R. Harmon, Profiles of Ph.D.’s in the Sciences (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1965), p. 47.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Amos H. Hawley, Human Ecology (New York: Ronald Press, 1950), p. 328.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Figures are taken from Saben, op. cit., Samuel Saben, “Geographic Mobility and Employment Status, March 1962–March 1963,” Special Labor Force Report No. 44 (U.S. Department of Labor, August, 1964), p. A9.

  18. Holen, op. cit..

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Bogue, The Population of the United States, p. 418; Foote et al., Housing Choices and Housing Constraints; and Shryock, op. cit., Population Mobility within the United States, (Chicago: Community and Family Study Center, 1964), pp. 403–4.

  20. Figures are calculated from Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Population, 1960. Subject Reports. Mobility for States and State Economic Areas, Final Report PC(2)-2B, 1963, pp. 23–24, 26–27.

  21. See, e.g., Ernest R. Mowrer, Family Disorganization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927); Harvey J. Locke, “Mobility and Family Disorganization,” American Sociological Review, V (August, 1940), 489–94; Robert E. L. Faris and H. Warren Dunham, Mental Disorder in Urban Areas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939); and Clifford R. Shaw, Delinquent Areas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929). For an evaluation of these studies, see Donald O. Cowgill, “Value Assumptions in Recent Research on Migration,” Sociological Quarterly, XI (October, 1961), 263–79.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Ronald Freedman, Recent Migration to Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), p. 211; T. Earl Sullinger, “The Social Significance of Mobility: An Omaha Study,” American Journal of Sociology, LV (May, 1950), 559–64.

    Google Scholar 

  23. R. E. Gordon,K. K. Gordon, andM. Gunther, The Split-Level Trap (New York: Dell, 1962); R. Chaskel, “Effects of Mobility on Family Life,” Social Work, IX (October, 1964), 83–91.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Freedman, op. cit.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Phillip Fellin and Eugene Litwak, “Neighborhood Cohesion under Conditions of Mobility,” American Sociological Review, XXVIII (June, 1963), 364–76; Eugene Litwak, “Geographic Mobility and Extended Family Cohesion,” American Sociological Review, XXV (June, 1960), 385–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Duncan and Duncan, op. cit. Otis Dudley Duncan, “A Socioeconomic Index for All Occupations” and “Properties and Characteristics of the Socioeconomic Index,” in Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Occupations and Social Status (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961)

  27. Robert Gutman, “Population Mobility in the American Middle Class,” in The Urban Condition, ed. Leonard J. Duhl (New York: Basic Books, 1963), p. 180. Also see Herbert J. Gans, “Effects of the Move from City to Suburb,” in Duhl, op. cit., pp. 184–98; Urban Studies Center, Problems of Migration among the American Middle Class (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, The State University, 1962); Bennett M. Berger, Working Class Suburb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); Foote et al., op. cit. Nelson Foote et al., Housing Choices and Housing Constraints (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960).

    Google Scholar 

  28. Cf. Sullinger, op. cit., T. Earl Sullinger, “The Social Significance of Mobility: An Omaha Study,” American Journal of Sociology, LV (May, 1950), 559–64.p. 560; Litwak, op. cit. Phillip Fellin and Eugene Litwak “Neighborhood Cohesion under Conditions of Mobility,” American Sociological Review, XXVIII (June, 1963), 364–76;

  29. See Everett S. Lee, “Socio-economic and Migration Differentials in Mental Disease, New York State, 1949–1951,” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, XLI (July, 1963), 249–68, and the articles in Kantor, op. cit. ed. Mildred B. Kantor (Spring-field, Ill.: Charles Thomas, 1965), pp. 166–95;

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Additional information

This research was made possible by grants from the Graduate School Research Committee and the Computing Center, both of the University of Wisconsin. The Social Systems Research Institute provided technical assistance in computer programming and data processing.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ladinsky, J. Sources of geographic mobility among professional workers: A multivariate analysis. Demography 4, 293–309 (1967). https://doi.org/10.2307/2060370

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2060370

Keywords

Navigation