Differential Net Migration Rates and the Quality of Life

Abstract

ECONOMISTS have suggested that differential growth in regional economy in the United States depends substantially upon labor supply, if it is assumed that the demand for a region's exports and its supply of capital are perfectly elastic.' The spatial movement of labor force or migration has been a hot subject in studies concerned with differential growth in regional income and employment. Most of these studies are concerned with a gross migration, and they always agree that employment or income consideration dominates other factors in making locational decisions among migrants.2 However, it should be noted that it is the rate of net migration (i.e., the difference of in-migration and out-migration divided by population) that directly affects the rate of labor force growth and, consequently, regional growth. Recently, more and more people have been commenting on the paradoxes of affluence. Discontent with the quality of life in the United States seems to have increased proportionally with technological advancement and growth in material wealth. Environmental quality, individual equality, economic opportunity and status, and a host of other forces that combine to shape the quality of life of the individual, are now major considerations in any public policy decisions. The primary objective of this paper is to explore the relationships between the variations in net migration rates among states and the levels of quality of life measured in those states. We first present a production model of the quality of life and some empirical results. Then follows a theoretical model, in which the decision of a household head to migrate is treated so as to maximize his quality of life. Empirical tests of the hypothesized relationship described in the migration model are contained in section IV. Concluding remarks follow.

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