Leah Platt Boustan

The Effect of Internal Migration on Local Labor Markets:American Cities during the Great Depression

The Great Depression offers a unique laboratory to investigate the causal impact of migration on local labor markets. We use variation in the generosity of New Deal programs and extreme weather events to instrument for migrant flows to and from U.S. cities. In-migration had little effect on the hourly earnings of existing residents. Instead, in-migration prompted some residents to move away and others to lose weeks of work or access to relief jobs. For every 10 arrivals, we estimate that 1.9 residents moved out, 2.1 were prevented from finding a relief job, and 1.9 shifted from full-time to part-time work.

Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migration and Racial Wage Convergence in the North, 1940–1970

Four million blacks left the South from 1940 to 1970, doubling the northern black workforce. I exploit variation in migrant flows within skill groups over time to estimate the elasticity of substitution by race. I then use this estimate to calculate counterfactual rates of wage growth. I find that black wages in the North would have been around 7 percent higher in 1970 if not for the migrant influx, while white wages would have remained unchanged. On net, migration was an avenue for black economic advancement, but the migration created both winners and losers.

Immigration in American Economic History

The United States has long been perceived as a land of opportunity for immigrants. Yet, both in the past and today, US natives have expressed concern that immigrants fail to integrate into US society and lower wages for existing workers. This paper reviews the literatures on historical and contemporary migrant flows, yielding new insights on migrant selection, assimilation of immigrants into US economy and society, and the effect of immigration on the labor market.

Population Trends as a Counterweight to Central City Decline, 1950–2000

The share of metropolitan residents living in central cities declined dramatically from 1950 to 2000. We argue that cities would have lost even further ground if not for demographic trends such as renewed immigration, delayed childbearing, and a decline in the share of households headed by veterans. We provide causal estimates of the effect of children on residential location using the birth of twins. The effect of veteran status is identified from a discontinuity in the probability of military service during and after the mass mobilization for World War II. Our results suggest that these changes in demographic composition were strong enough to bolster city population but not to fully counteract socioeconomic factors favoring suburban growth.

Black Migration, White Flight: The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets

In the decades following World War II, the center of gravity in American urban areas shifted from the inner city to the suburban ring. Suburbanization occurred alongside an influx of black migrants from the rural South, the majority of whom settled in downtown areas. My dissertation begins by assessing the causal relationship between this growing black urban population and white relocation to the suburbs. I then explore the motivation of households that left racially diverse cities. The existing historical literature on “white flight” emphasizes white distaste for living near black neighbors. However, because cities were already highly segregated by neighborhood, avoiding black neighbors did not require a suburban address. I focus instead on the civic costs of living in a diverse jurisdiction. These include compromising on public goods and sharing a single school system. Lastly, I consider the effect of black migration on the wages of similarly skilled workers in the northern labor market. The first chapter documents a correlation between black in-migration and the relocation of white households to the suburbs within metropolitan areas over time. This pattern is consistent with—but not necessarily proof of—white flight. First, any inmigration to a downtown area could bid up urban housing prices, inducing some residents to move out. However, black in-migration was associated with falling prices in cities relative to their suburbs, which implies that the migrants themselves reduced the perceived value of urban living. A correlation between black migration and white suburbanization could also arise if black migrants were attracted by the same economic factors that underlie the demand for suburban living—for example, rising incomes and centrally located manufacturing jobs—or by cheaper urban housing left in the wake of white departures. To address this possible source of reverse causality, I design an instrumental-variables procedure that predicts black out-migration from southern counties using local agricultural conditions and assigns these flows to northern cities based on settlement patterns observed during the first black migration (1915–1934). These predictions are correlated with

To the New World and Back Again: Return Migrants in the Age of Mass Migration

The authors compile large data sets from Norwegian and US historical censuses to study return migration during the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1913). Norwegian immigrants who returned to Norway held lower-paid occupations than did Norwegian immigrants who stayed in the United States, both before and after their first transatlantic migration, suggesting they were negatively selected from the migrant pool. Upon returning to Norway, return migrants held higher-paid occupations relative to Norwegians who never moved, despite hailing from poorer backgrounds. These patterns suggest that despite being negatively selected, return migrants had been able to accumulate savings and could improve their economic circumstances once they returned home.