The cost of living, labor market opportunities and the migration decision: More on the problems of misspecification and aggregation bias

Factors Influencing the State-Level Settlement Pattern of the Undocumented Immigrant Population in the United States

“…In addition, since higher previous-period employment growth implies better employment/job prospects (Riew 1973;Vedder et al 1986;Saltz 1998;Cebula and Alexander 2006), a population cohort would prefer settling in a state with a stronger job growth history, ceteris paribus. Since a higher cost of living reduces the purchasing power of one's income, we expect that the population cohort (undocumented immigrants) being studied here would prefer settlement in a state with a lower cost of living, ceteris paribus (Renas 1983;Conway and Houtenvile 1998, 2001, 2003Gale and Heath 2000;Cebula and Alexander 2006). Ruger and Sorens (2009, p. 1) define "economic freedom" as "… the ability to dispose of one's…justly acquired property and resources however one sees fit, so long as it does not coercively infringe upon another individual's ability to do the same."…”

“…The adoption of a variable such as COSTj has become more common in population studies in recent years (Renas 1983;Cebula 1979;Conway and Houtenvile 1998, 2001, 2003Gale and Heath 2000;Cebula and Alexander 2006). The role of state income taxation in population studies has recently become more prevalent (Conway and Houtenvile 1998, 2001, 2003Gale and Heath 2000;Cebula and Alexander 2006); in this study, the variable STINCTXj is adoped to reflect the presence of a state income tax in state j.…”

“…To measure quality of life conditions for undocumented immigrants in state j, the focus in this study is on three factors, namely: JANTEMPj, the mean January temperature in state j , as a measure of climatic conditions; COASTj, a binary dummy variable indicating that state j borders the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico; and HISPj, the documented percentage of the population of state j in 2000 that was classified as Hispanic. As in many studies of population settlement patterns (Renas 1983;Saltz 1998;Conway and Houtenvile 1998, 2001, 2003Gale and Heath R.J. Cebula et al 2000; Cebula and Alexander 2006), JANTEMPj, or some reasonable substitute for JANTEMPj, is considered as a potentially important influence. In earlier studies, and in the present one as well, it is expected that a warmer climate is likely to be an attraction to most population groups, ceteris paribus.…”

“…It is observed that because this study uses undocumented immigration from a variety of undisclosed source nations, and because illegal immigration occurs at a variety of locations along U.S. borders, issues such as distance and moving costs are obviously omitted from the computation of the value of DPVij and, thus, from the model based thereupon. 1 Accordingly, following in principle the models in Tullock (1971), Riew (1973), Renas (1983), Vedder et al (1986), and Cebula and Alexander (2006), among others, DPVij consists in this study of two broad sets of considerations. These are as follows:…”

Impact of the real median price of single-family homes on US internal net migration: an exploratory empirical note

“…Among the exceptions to this are Cebula (1993) and Renas (1978Renas ( , 1980Renas ( , 1983. The latter studies have found that the higher the overall cost of living in an area, the lower the net in-migration to that area.…”