Mind the Gap: Exploring the Urban-Rural Differences in Inter-County Migration Motivations

Keywords: Inter-county migration; Urban-rural gap; Determinants of migration; Logistic regression
Abstract Type: Lightning Paper Abstract

Abstract

This study examines the impact of job availability, housing affordability, and political climate on migration across the urban-rural continuum in the United States during the 2009-2019 period. Merging the individual-level Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and county-level census and election datasets, we estimate fixed-effect logistic models to analyze the urban-rural differences in the effects of these motivations on the probability of inter-county migration. Controlling for demographic characteristics of individuals, we find that unemployment has a stronger effect on motivating migration in large fringe urban counties than other county types, whereas housing affordability has a significantly positive effect on migration into rural counties. The analysis also points to economic motives as prevailing determinants in inter-county migration compared to political preferences, despite dramatically opposite effects of right-wing political orientation on migration tendency into large central urban counties and remote rural counties. The findings highlight the importance of considering urban-rural discrepancies in residential mobility and have important policy implications for resource allocation in different regions.