IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed013/898.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Dual Income Couples and Interstate Migration

Author

Listed:
  • Bulent Guler

    (Indiana University - Bloomington)

Abstract

We quantify the contribution of women's labor force attachment on the declining trend in interstate migration. Using CPS and SIPP data, we first document that families in which both spouses have similar incomes, the propensity to migrate is significantly lower than in families with unequal spousal earnings. We construct a labor search model in which households make location, marriage, and divorce decisions. We calibrate the model to match aggregate U.S. statistics on mobility, marriage and labor flows and use it to quantify the effect of a fall in the gender wage gap on interstate migration. Narrowing the gender wage gap increases the women's contribution to the total family income; it induces a higher share of families with both spouses working and more couples with similar incomes. Our model predicts that the observed change in the gender wage gap accounts for 33% of the drop in family migration since 1991.

Suggested Citation

  • Bulent Guler, 2013. "Dual Income Couples and Interstate Migration," 2013 Meeting Papers 898, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed013:898
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2013/paper_898.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Greg Kaplan & Sam Schulhofer‐Wohl, 2017. "Understanding The Long‐Run Decline In Interstate Migration," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(1), pages 57-94, February.
    2. John Kennan & James R. Walker, 2011. "The Effect of Expected Income on Individual Migration Decisions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(1), pages 211-251, January.
    3. Jesus Fernández-Villaverde & Dirk Krueger, 2007. "Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(3), pages 552-565, August.
    4. Jonathan F. Pingle, 2006. "The relocation decisions of working couples," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2006-33, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Thomas Baudin & David de la Croix & Paula E. Gobbi, 2015. "Fertility and Childlessness in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(6), pages 1852-1882, June.
    6. Abigail Wozniak, 2010. "Are College Graduates More Responsive to Distant Labor Market Opportunities?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(4), pages 944-970.
    7. Barro, Robert J & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 223-251, April.
      • Barro, R.J. & Sala-I-Martin, X., 1991. "Convergence," Papers 645, Yale - Economic Growth Center.
      • Barro, Robert J. & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Scholarly Articles 3451299, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    8. Larry A. Sjaastad, 1970. "The Costs and Returns of Human Migration," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Harry W. Richardson (ed.), Regional Economics, chapter 9, pages 115-133, Palgrave Macmillan.
    9. Giuseppe Moscarini & Kaj Thomsson, 2007. "Occupational and Job Mobility in the US," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 109(4), pages 807-836, December.
    10. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner & Georgi Kocharkov & Cezar Santos, 2016. "Technology and the Changing Family: A Unified Model of Marriage, Divorce, Educational Attainment, and Married Female Labor-Force Participation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 1-41, January.
    11. Sam Schulhofer-Wohl, 2012. "Negative equity does not reduce homeowners’ mobility," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Feb, pages 1-17.
    12. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner, 2009. "Marriage and Divorce since World War II: Analyzing the Role of Technological Progress on the Formation of Households," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2008, Volume 23, pages 231-276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Chiappori, Pierre-André & Donni, Olivier, 2009. "Non-unitary Models of Household Behavior: A Survey of the Literature," IZA Discussion Papers 4603, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Mincer, Jacob, 1978. "Family Migration Decisions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(5), pages 749-773, October.
    15. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1991. "Convergence across States and Regions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(1), pages 107-182.
    16. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    17. Guler, Bulent & Guvenen, Fatih & Violante, Giovanni L., 2012. "Joint-search theory: New opportunities and new frictions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(4), pages 352-369.
    18. Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2011. "The Incidence of Local Labor Demand Shocks," 2011 Meeting Papers 629, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Sandell, Steven H, 1977. "Women and the Economics of Family Migration," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 59(4), pages 406-414, November.
    20. Janice Compton & Robert A. Pollak, 2007. "Why Are Power Couples Increasingly Concentrated in Large Metropolitan Areas?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(3), pages 475-512.
    21. Saks, Raven E., 2008. "Job creation and housing construction: Constraints on metropolitan area employment growth," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 178-195, July.
    22. repec:mpr:mprres:7714 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Ferreira, Fernando & Gyourko, Joseph & Tracy, Joseph, 2010. "Housing busts and household mobility," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 34-45, July.
    24. Dora L. Costa & Matthew E. Kahn, 2000. "Power Couples: Changes in the Locational Choice of the College Educated, 1940–1990," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(4), pages 1287-1315.
    25. Dana Rotz, "undated". "Why Have Divorce Rates Fallen? The Role of Women's Age at Marriage," Mathematica Policy Research Reports ed0498975f9b467b9858ee065, Mathematica Policy Research.
    26. Hernan Winkler, 2011. "The Effect of Homeownership on Geographic Mobility and Labor Market Outcomes," 2011 Meeting Papers 196, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    27. Ruben Hernandez-Murillo & Lesli S. Ott & Michael T. Owyang & Denise Whalen, 2011. "Patterns of interstate migration in the United States from the survey of income and program participation," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 93(May), pages 169-186.
    28. repec:mpr:mprres:6984 is not listed on IDEAS
    29. Henry Hyatt & Erika McEntarfer, 2012. "Job-to-Job Flows and the Business Cycle," Working Papers 12-04, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Foged, Mette, 2016. "Family migration and relative earnings potentials," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 87-100.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin Junge & Martin D. Munk & Panu Poutvaara, 2013. "International Migration of Couples," Norface Discussion Paper Series 2013018, Norface Research Programme on Migration, Department of Economics, University College London.
    2. Ning Jia & Raven Molloy & Christopher Smith & Abigail Wozniak, 2023. "The Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy Questions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 144-180, March.
    3. Florian Oswald, 2015. "Regional Shocks, Migration and Homeownership," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/n1d9kd7k48k, Sciences Po.
    4. Michael Amior & Alan Manning, 2018. "The Persistence of Local Joblessness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1942-1970, July.
    5. Christine Braun & Charlie Nusbaum & Peter Rupert, 2021. "Labor Market Dynamics and the Migration Behavior of Married Couples," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 42, pages 239-263, October.
    6. Ganong, Peter & Shoag, Daniel, 2012. "Why Has Regional Convergence in the U.S. Stopped?," Working Paper Series rwp12-028, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    7. Foged, Mette, 2016. "Family migration and relative earnings potentials," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 87-100.
    8. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/n1d9kd7k48keoo4brb07foqbd is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Joanna Venator, 2022. "Dual-Earner Migration Decisions, Earnings, and Unemployment Insurance," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 1052, Boston College Department of Economics.
    10. Florian Oswald, 2015. "Regional Shocks, Migration and Homeownership," 2015 Meeting Papers 759, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. John Kennan & James R. Walker, 2013. "Modeling individual migration decisions," Chapters, in: Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Migration, chapter 2, pages 39-54, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Zhengyu Cai & Heather M. Stephens & John V. Winters, 2019. "Motherhood, migration, and self-employment of college graduates," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 611-629, October.
    13. Kent Eliasson & Robert Nakosteen & Olle Westerlund & Michael Zimmer, 2014. "All in the family: Self-selection and migration by couples," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(1), pages 101-124, March.
    14. Ahmet Ali Taskin, 2014. "Sorted and Settled: Migration Decisions of Dual Income Families," ERSA conference papers ersa14p1219, European Regional Science Association.
    15. Botsch, Matthew J. & Morris, Stephen D., 2021. "Job loss risk, expected mobility, and home ownership," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    16. Michael Amior, 2015. "Why are Higher Skilled Workers More Mobile Geographically? The Role of the Job Surplus," CEP Discussion Papers dp1338, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    17. Ryan M. Gallagher & Joseph Persky, 2020. "Heterogeneity of birth‐state effects on internal migration," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(3), pages 517-537, June.
    18. Blackaby, David H. & Drinkwater, Stephen, 2004. "Migration and Labour Market Differences: The Case of Wales," IZA Discussion Papers 1275, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Yagan, Danny, 2016. "The Enduring Employment Impact of Your Great Recession Location," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt12d0w9bs, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    20. Doepke, M. & Tertilt, M., 2016. "Families in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1789-1891, Elsevier.
    21. Compton, Janice & Pollak, Robert A., 2014. "Family proximity, childcare, and women’s labor force attachment," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 72-90.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:red:sed013:898. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.