The spatial focus of U.S. interstate migration flows

"Despite the widespread interest in the changing geographies of national migration regimes, it is somewhat remarkable that no widely accepted measure of the spatial concentration or focus exhibited by such geographies has emerged. We examine four of the most popular indices of inequality in this paper and contrast their performance as measures of spatial focus. Adopting the coefficient of variation as our preferred alternative, we go on to examine the spatial focus of aggregate interstate migration steams in the U.S. over time. Then we consider disaggregations of the migration streams by age, race and nativity, and examine the role of states as national redistributors of these same subpopulations."