Crossing State Boundaries: Economic Structure, Educational Attainment, and Interstate Migration

Kevin Shafer, Ohio State University

How have the migration patterns of American young adults changed in the 1990s? Do highly educated individuals differ in their interstate mobility patterns from less educated individuals? How do state-level structural characteristics affect their moves? Using 5% IPUMS data from the 1990 and 2000 censuses, we employ log-linear models to examine these questions. Not only do we take into account mobility among neighboring states, regions, and intra-regional, we also pay attention to the economic structure of each state. We achieve this by linking state level characteristics, such as the shares of manufacturing, information, and technology jobs to the census data. We aim to examine how changes in state-level factors in the 1990s affect mobility patterns of young adults and how young adults’ educational attainment plays a role in mobility patterns.