Geographical pattern analysis of income migration in the United States

"How one conceptualises the impacts of migration depends on whether one takes the viewpoint of aggregate area-level income change, of per capita change, or of longer-term (future earnings) change. Several empirical analytical measures are proposed in order to conceptualise the various income impacts of migration.... [A] decomposition procedure is developed for examining how the changes in per capita income of states reflect three different income differentials: those between (a) in-migrants and 'stayers', (b) out-migrants and 'stayers', and (c) in-migrants and out-migrants. Examination of these measures, and of typologies based on them, highlights how income migration significantly and differentially impacts upon U.S. states. The methods are illustrated here in the context of an important new American data source: the 1993-94 migrant income data released by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service."