Who moves? A logit model analysis of inter-provincial migration in Canada

Abstract

This paper addresses the topic of inter-provincial migration in terms of the basic question: 'Who moves?'. Panel logit models of the probability that an individual changes his or her province of residence from one year to the next over the 1982-1995 period are estimated using tax-based longitudinal data. It is found that moving is (i) inversely related to the home province's population size, presumably reflecting local economic conditions and labour market scale effects, while language also plays an important role; (ii) more common among residents of smaller cities, towns, and especially rural areas than those in larger cities; (iii) negatively related to age, marriage, and the presence of children for both men and women; (iv) positively related to the provincial unemployment rate, the individuals' receipt of unemployment insurance (except Entry Men), having no market income (except for Entry Men and Entry Women), and the receipt of social assistance (especially for men); (v) (slightly) positively related to earnings levels (beyond the zero earnings point) for prime aged men, but not for others; and (vi) more or less stable over time, with men's rates declining slightly and women's holding steadier or rising slightly, indicating a divergence in trends along gender lines.

The Immigration Triangle: Quebec, Canada, and the Rest of the World

“…The niche public agent offers incentives to enter the niche portion of the more conventional outcomes on interprovincial movers. Finnie (2000) found that age was negatively related to mobility, with younger people being more prone to moving. Edmonston (2002) corroborated this finding, and the IMDB (2000) specified that immigrants 25 to 44 at landing were more likely to move.…”

“…In addition by 1995 almost half of the 22,595 business immigrants initially admitted to Quebec moved to another province and 17.5% of refugees had left. Nonetheless, Finnie (2000) remains optimistic in light of these observations when he argues that the situation could have been even worse.…”

“…Using the Canadian census Edmonston (2002) found that migration rates for the 1986-1991 period differed for the foreign-born and the Canadian-born in three ways: rates of in-migration and out-migration were higher for recent immigrants cohorts; rates of out-migration for the foreign-born were particularly high for Newfoundland, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories; the in-migration rates of the foreign-born were much higher for Ontario and British Columbia. 19 Moreover, Finnie (2000) found that English speakers are twice as likely to leave Quebec as francophones. Consistent with Finnie's finding, an IMDB Profile (2000) Edmonston (2002) also found a linguistic dimension to Quebec emigration.…”

“…The provincial unemployment rate was positively related to interprovincial mobility, and those receiving employment insurance were more likely to leave the province. except for men between 20 and 24 years of age (Finnie, 2000). Finally, age, location and education had Given the speculative and counter intuitive results in the extant Quebec moverstayer literature we now offer a more rigorous general immigrant mover-stayer model.…”

“…For the 1980-1995 period IMDB analysts also reported that 15% of immigrant movers were bilingual. Finnie (2000), using the Longitudinal Administrative Database (LIDS) for the 1982-1995 period, underlines the importance of "minority language" effects, and reports that English speakers in Quebec are twice as likely to move as francophones who share the same characteristics, while immigrants who spoke only French tended to leave Quebec at inordinately low rates, i.e., 3.7% for the 1980-1995period (IMDB, 2000. 20 In addition to citing the language factor as a causal agent in moving the literature cites a host of demographic and economic variables: age, family status, area of residence, schooling, earnings, employment level, and access to employment insurance.…”