Economic and Family Determinants of Migration Dynamics

描述(由申请人提供)：拟议的研究分析了个人决定按照预期的终身效用进行迁移，最大化对感知到的收入差异的反应。最终目标(在本申请中提议的工作之外)是制定一个综合框架，纳入生命周期移徙的经济、家庭和社会决定因素。我们试图应用这一框架，利用劳工统计局国家纵向调查计划1979和1997年青年队列(NLSY79和NLSY97)的数据，对个人在生命周期早期阶段的移徙决定进行全面分析。然而，为了研究这一应用，我们将集中分析NLSY79。该研究项目涉及建立重复的个人迁移决策(包括“继续迁移”和“反向迁移”决策)的动态模型，并根据面板数据进行估计。在初步工作中，我们确定了一个涵盖多个地点(例如国家)和多个时期(年)的模型在经济计量上是可行的，而且它足够灵活，可以考虑到影响移徙的一些主要背景因素，包括地点之间的距离和地点大小的差异。通过使用移民决策的显式动态模型，我们可以更好地了解不同人口群体之间移民行为的差异(包括结婚和离婚的影响)，以及经济环境变化引起的差异。一个主要的应用包括分析因国家间福利差异而引起的移民激励，以及这些激励措施因联邦和州福利政策最近的变化而发生的变化。我们的早期工作侧重于经济激励，下一步合乎逻辑的步骤是纳入家庭决定因素。本申请中提出的工作考虑了扩展，以包括家庭的形成和解散，兄弟姐妹对家庭网络的代理的影响，以及区分就业和工资影响的更丰富的搜索模型。每一次扩展都带来了独特的数据和建模(概念和计量经济学)挑战。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research analyzes individual decisions to migrate as expected lifetime utility maximizing responses to perceived income differentials. The ultimate goal (beyond the work proposed in this application) is to develop an integrated framework incorporating economic, family and social determinants of life cycle migration. We seek to apply this framework to provide a comprehensive analysis of migration decisions of individuals in the early stages of the life cycle, using data from the 1979 and 1997 youth cohorts (NLSY79 and NLSY97) of the National Longitudinal Surveys Program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, for research in this application we will concentrate our analysis on the NLSY79. The research project involves building a dynamic model of repeated individual migration decisions (including "continuation migration" and "reverse migration" decisions), and estimating it on panel data. In preliminary work, we have established that a model covering many locations (e.g. States) and many periods (years) is econometrically feasible, and that it is flexible enough to allow for some major background factors affecting migration, including distance between locations, and differences in location size. By using an explicit dynamic model of migration decisions we can better understand differences in migration behavior across different demographic groups (including the effects of marriage and divorce), as well as differences arising from changes in the economic environment. A leading application involves an analysis of incentives to migrate arising from inter-State differences in welfare benefits, and changes in these incentives associated with recent changes in federal and state welfare policies. Our early work focuses on economic incentives and the next logical step is to incorporate family determinants. Work proposed in this application considers extensions to include family formation and dissolution, the influence of siblings to proxy for family networks, as well as a richer search model that distinguishes between the influence of employment and wages. Each extension presents unique data and modeling (conceptual and econometric) challenges.