Economic Influences on Migration Decisions of Young Workers

经济对青年工人移民决策的影响

• 批准号: 0112288
• 负责人: John Kennan
• 金额: $ 28.54万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-07-15 至 2007-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0112288&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Economic; Influences; Migration; Decisions; Young

The extent to which Americans move from one part of the country to another is remarkable when compared with data for other countries. The research analyzes the relevance of geographical differences in income from the point of view of young people who must decide whether to accept the opportunities available in their current location, or move elsewhere in search of better opportunities. There are in fact large geographical differences in wages, despite large migration flows that might be expected to eliminate such differences. There are also large geographical differences in welfare benefits, and policy-makers express concerns that these differences might create "welfare magnets" in some locations. Thus there is reason to believe that differences in expected income may help explain migration decisions. A more detailed understanding of the relationship between income and migration will be useful in many applications. For example, it will lead toward better forecasts of how quickly regional differences in income and poverty are likely to dissipate; and it will greatly improve our ability to analyze the effects of changes in the welfare system. We build an economic model of individual migration decisions, and we fit it to individual histories, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Individual decisions to migrate are modeled as a job search problem in which welfare benefits or other alternative sources of income act as a floor, insuring workers against bad job search outcomes. A worker can draw a wage only by visiting a location, thereby incurring a moving cost. Locations are distinguished by known differences in mean wages, amenity values and alternative income sources. A worker starts the life-cycle in some home location and chooses an optimal sequence of moves before settling down. There is a two-dimensional ranking of locations, ex ante: some places have high wages, and others have attractive fallback options (both adjusted for amenity values). The decision problem is too complicated to be solved analytically, so we proceed by using a discrete approximation that can be solved numerically. State data on welfare benefits and Census data on wages are used to estimate the parameters describing the menu of choices available to individuals, and preference parameter values are selected so as to maximize the likelihood of the migration decisions seen in the NLSY data. The result of the project will be a structural explanation of migration behavior, that can be used to say what would have happened if the same individuals had been confronted with a different menu of choices. In particular, the results will be used to assess the extent to which migration decisions are driven by geographical wage differentials, and by welfare magnets. Preliminary empirical results indicate that a useful structural model of welfare migration is within reach, and it is likely that this can be extended to obtain a broader characterization of migration decisions of young workers. It will than be possible to analyze behavioral responses to situations not seen in the data, such as the implementation of new policies affecting the labor market.

与其他国家的数据相比，美国人从一个地区迁移到另一个地区的程度是惊人的。该研究从年轻人的角度分析了收入地域差异的相关性，这些年轻人必须决定是接受当前位置提供的机会，还是搬到其他地方寻找更好的机会。事实上，在工资方面存在着巨大的地域差异，尽管大规模的移民流动可能有望消除这种差异。福利待遇也存在很大的地域差异，政策制定者担心这些差异可能会在某些地区形成“福利磁铁”。因此，我们有理由相信，预期收入的差异可能有助于解释移民决定。更详细地了解收入和移民之间的关系在许多应用中将是有用的。例如，它将有助于更好地预测地区收入和贫困差异可能会以多快的速度消失；它将大大提高我们分析福利制度变化影响的能力。我们建立了一个个人移民决策的经济模型，并使用来自全国青年纵向调查（NLSY）的数据将其与个人历史相匹配。移民的个人决定被建模为一个求职问题，其中福利或其他替代收入来源充当了一个底线，确保工人不受糟糕的求职结果的影响。工人只能通过访问一个地点来领取工资，因此产生了搬迁成本。地点的区别在于平均工资、舒适价值和其他收入来源的已知差异。一个工人的生命周期从某个家庭位置开始，并在安定下来之前选择一个最佳的移动顺序。有一个二维的地点排名，事先：一些地方工资高，其他地方有吸引力的备选选择（两者都根据舒适度进行了调整）。决策问题太复杂，无法解析解决，因此我们使用可以数值解决的离散近似来进行。国家福利数据和人口普查工资数据用于估计描述个人可用选择菜单的参数，并选择偏好参数值，以便最大限度地提高NLSY数据中看到的移民决策的可能性。该项目的结果将是对迁移行为的结构性解释，这可以用来说明如果相同的个体面临不同的选择菜单会发生什么。具体而言，研究结果将用于评估移民决策在多大程度上受到地域工资差异和福利吸引力的影响。初步的实证结果表明，一个有用的福利移民结构模型是触手可及的，而且很可能可以扩展，以获得更广泛的年轻工人移民决策的特征。这样就有可能分析对数据中没有出现的情况的行为反应，比如影响劳动力市场的新政策的实施。