Migration Determinants and Employment Consequences of White and Black Families, 1985–1990

This study examines the determinants and employment consequences of white and black family interstate migration within the United States during the period 1985–90. We pay particular attention to selecting intact family migrants from the 1990 PUMS data to eliminate couples who migrated from different origins. Migration status is treated as a selection process and is incorporated into the employment opportunity models. We show that various socioenvironmental and fiscal factors are significantly and disproportionately associated with the location choices of family migrants for both whites and blacks. Expected economic benefits are more important to destination choices by black families than they are for white families. Consistent with traditional family migration theory, the employment prospects of migrant wives seem to play a lesser role than the husbands’ employment in family migration decisions for both blacks and whites.