Abstract
In this paper we analyse the differences in well-being between Spanish municipalities reflected by people’s migratory decisions. It is assumed that people move for improving their well-being conditions and consequently migratory flows basically reflect perceived differences in the quality of life between potential destinations. Our empirical findings are: first, municipalities in the Mediterranean Axis are perceived as those with the highest quality of life; second, we detect a general process of convergence in quality of life conditions among the Spanish municipalities in the last 15 years; third, estimated levels of quality of life are inversely related to urban size; and, fourth, people perceive nearby destinations as the most attractive places to move to.
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Notes
Nakajima and Tabuchi (2011) assume that the fixed cost c is arbitrarily large, thus the following approximation to the probability in (3) applies
\(p_{ij} \approx \frac{{\exp (u_{j} )}}{{\exp (u_{i} + c)}} ,\)
and, subsequently, they consider:
\(\ln \left( {\frac{{N_{ij} }}{{N_{ji} }}} \right) \approx 2\left( {u_{j} - u_{i} } \right) .\)
Such an assumption hardly simplifies the estimation of utility differentials, but making the approximation crucially dependent on it. In this way, we are not confident that this assumption could be applied in all situations.
See Douglas (1997, p. 417–419) for a detailed justification of the use of population to control for the number of locations or “opportunities” available at the destination.
In fact, this approach assumes that the consensus utility level associated with a municipality may vary depending on the origin of the migratory flows, that is, Eq. (2) should be rewritten as \(U_{ij} = u_{ij} + \varepsilon_{ij} .\)
The Spanish local authorities are required to make entries in these registers for all individuals who usually live in the municipality, whether they are Spaniards or foreign citizens, having or not residence permits.
The number of municipalities over 10,000 inhabitants varies from 618 in 1997 to 759 in 2011.
Note that, given the limitation of the available data, gross and net migration numbers depicted in Fig. 1 refers solely to migrants from one location to another within municipalities in our sample.
The migration effectiveness index (the ratio of net migration flows to gross migration) went down from 0.4184 in 1997 to 0.1236 in 2011.
Detailed numerical tables of results are available on request to the authors. We decide to focus on figures in search of simplicity for the text.
This is an index function such that
\(\text{sgn} (z) = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}c} { - 1} & {{\text{if}}\,\,\,z < 0} \\ 0 & {{\text{if}}\,\,\,z = 0} \\ 1 & {{\text{if}}\,\,\,z > 0} \\ \end{array} } \right.\)
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Acknowledgments
Andrés Artal-Tur acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Project MINECO ECO2011-27169) co-funded by FEDER.
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Appendix: Regional Utility Differentials
Appendix: Regional Utility Differentials
This Appendix presents additional results regarding the estimation of utility differentials between the Spanish NUTS2 regions (autonomous communities). Estimates for the period 1997–2011 are shown in Table 1 together with those obtained by applying the approach of Nakajima and Tabuchi (2011). A few conclusions may be drawn from these aggregate results. First, judging by the statistical significance of the estimates, the regression we propose in this study define here a more contrasted pattern of utility differences than the pattern emerging from the Nakajima and Tabuchi approach. Secondly, the regression we propose in this study has a lower coefficient of determination than the corresponding regression in Nakajima and Tabuchi. However, we do not believe the latter should necessarily be interpreted as evidence against the approach we propose given that the dependent variable is not the same in both regressions. Finally, there remains obvious discrepancies between results from each method that encourage further research in this field in order to elaborate reliable indexes of quality of life from data on migratory decisions.
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Navarro-Azorín, J.M., Artal-Tur, A. Foot Voting in Spain: What Do Internal Migrations Say About Quality of Life in the Spanish Municipalities?. Soc Indic Res 124, 501–515 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0804-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0804-6