Poor People on the Move: County‐to‐County Migration and the Spatial Concentration of Poverty

Abstract

"Poverty rates in high-poverty and low-poverty rural [U.S.] counties, and, thus, the spatial concentration of poverty, are affected by poverty-specific differences in in-migration and out-migration patterns. These patterns are investigated using 1985-90 county-to-county migration data from the decennial census. Effects on poverty rates of four migration flows (in- and out-migration of poor, in- and out-migration of nonpoor) are quantified, and their impacts on spatial concentration of poverty are assessed. The effect of selected county characteristics on the migration of the poor and nonpoor in nonmetro counties [is] estimated."

Migration Decisions of Dual-earner Families: An Application of Multilevel Modeling

“…Empirical studies have found that migration and employment growth are mutually dependent; however, employment growth affects net migration more strongly than net migration affects employment (Chun, 1996;Greenwood, 1981). Nord (1998) argued that the poor and nonpoor move in response to real economic opportunity, but the migration patterns of the two groups differ because the opportunities that attract them are mixed in varying proportions in different places.…”

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.

“…Every migration adjusts the poverty rate of both the sending and receiving county. Research from an earlier period suggests that high poverty counties experience high in-migration rates of poor people, but also high out-migration rates of poor people such that equilibrium in the poverty rate would be observed net of any endogenous changes in the economy (Nord, Luloff & Jensen 1995 In essence, the denominator of this equation is the economic volatility within a countyboth sectoral increase and decrease -and therefore, the value of X s is bounded at +/-1. These control variables served a dual purpose in the structural models: they allowed for some understanding of the effect of economic change while controlling for measures of 'static' socio-economic conditions, but more importantly, they allowed for the estimation of reciprocal effects between net migration and poverty by serving as instrumental variables.…”

Governmentalities of mobility: The role of housing in the governance of Australian rural mobilities

“…While counterurbanisation has been attributed as having a positive effect on reviving previously dying rural housing markets, a number of other studies have found cause for concern regarding the impact of this type of mobility and rural housing. For instance, in Australia and the United States the ability to access affordable social and private forms of housing in rural locations has been argued to produce a type of 'welfare-led' migration of low-income households to these areas (Fitchen, 1994(Fitchen, , 1995Nord et al, 1995;Cromartie and Nord, 1997;Hugo and Bell, 1998;Burnley et al, 2007;Costello, 2009;Monchuk et al, 2012). Such processes are argued to 'trap' lowincome households into poorly resourced locations, further isolating them from employment and other social services.…”