Welfare-Induced Migration at State Borders: New Evidence from Micro-Data

Area of Science:

• Economics
• Sociology
• Demography

Background:

• Welfare migration literature has explored various approaches to understanding population movements driven by social assistance policies.
• Previous research, such as McKinnish (2005), utilized state border comparisons to identify welfare migration effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide the most comprehensive tests to date for welfare migration.
• To determine the relative importance of short-distance moves in welfare migration flows.

Main Methods:

• Extends the identification strategy comparing welfare participation at state borders to interiors.
• Utilizes micro-data from the 1980 and 1990 Decennial Censuses.
• Combines border-interior comparisons with demographic comparisons from existing literature.

Main Results:

• Estimates show signs and patterns consistent with the presence of welfare migration effects.
• Magnitudes of estimates suggest short-distance moves are significant in welfare-induced migration.
• Most of the estimates lacked statistical significance.

Conclusions:

• The study provides evidence supporting the existence of welfare migration effects.
• Short-distance moves appear to play a notable role in welfare migration patterns.
• The lack of statistical significance in most estimates warrants caution and further investigation.