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Temporal and spatial variation in age-specific net migration in the United States

Demography

Abstract

As fertility differences in the United States diminish, population redistribution trends are increasingly dependent on migration. This research used newly developed county-level age-specific net migration estimates for the 1990s, supplemented with longitudinal age-specific migration data spanning the prior 40 years, to ascertain whether there are clear longitudinal trends in age-specific net migration and to determine if there is spatial clustering in the migration patterns. The analysis confirmed the continuation into the 1990s of distinct net migration “signature patterns” for most types of counties, although there was temporal variation in the overall volume of migration across the five decades. A spatial autocorrelation analysis revealed large, geographically contiguous regions of net in-migration (in particular, Florida and the Southwest) and geographically contiguous regions of net out-migration (the Great Plains, in particular) that persisted over time. Yet the patterns of spatial concentration and fragmentation over time in these migration data demonstrate the relevance of this “neighborhood” approach to understanding spatiotemporal change in migration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Loyola University-Chicago, 60626, Chicago, IL

    Kenneth M. Johnson

  2. Department of Rural Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA

    Paul R. Voss, Roger B. Hammer, Glenn V. Fuguitt & Scott Mcniven

Authors
  1. Kenneth M. Johnson
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  2. Paul R. Voss
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  3. Roger B. Hammer
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  4. Glenn V. Fuguitt
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  5. Scott Mcniven
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Additional information

This research was funded by grants from the North Central Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service, the Economic Research Service of the USDA, and the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station (Hatch Project No. WIS04536). The authors acknowledge the support and advice of John Dwyer, Susan Stewart, and Calvin Beale. We also acknowledge Alfred Nucci and Larry Long for allowing us to use their classi cation system for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. This is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Minneapolis, MN, May 2, 2003.

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Johnson, K.M., Voss, P.R., Hammer, R.B. et al. Temporal and spatial variation in age-specific net migration in the United States. Demography 42, 791–812 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2005.0033

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