Economic restructuring: The effects on migration and poverty rates in the U.S. during the 1990s. Paper presented at the 2007 Rural Sociological Society Annual Meeting.

Abstract

The popular media and academic sphere has been filled with claims about a “new” economy since the early 1990s. A common theme of the new economy is the change of production in terms of industrial sector and in terms of geographic location. The purpose of this study is to model the effects of economic restructuring during the 1990s on the migration and poverty rates of U.S. counties. According to neoclassical economic theories, wages and net migration should flow in opposite directions as employers and employees attempt to maximize their profits. I find this theory to be lacking in explanatory power, so I develop alternatives which allow reciprocal effects between migration and poverty, and simultaneously incorporate spatial spill-over effects near growing suburban counties. I conclude that many sectors typical of the new economy – for instance Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate – actually have no beneficial effect on migration or poverty.