Thomas J. Cooke

A Cross-National Comparison of the Impact of Family Migration on Women's Employment Status

In this paper we consider the effects of family migration on women’s employment status, using census microdata from Great Britain and the United States. We test a simple hypothesis that families tend to move long distances in favor of the male’s career and that this can have a detrimental effect on women’s employment status. Unlike many previous studies of this question, our work emphasizes the importance of identifying couples that have migrated together, rather than simply comparing long-distance (fe)male migrants with nonmigrant (fe)males individually. We demonstrate that women’s employment status is harmed by family migration; the results we present are surprisingly consistent for Great Britain and the United States, despite differing economic situations and cultural norms regarding gender and migration. We also demonstrate that studies that fail to identify linked migrant couples are likely to underestimate the negative effects of family migration on women’s employment status.

Family Migration and the Relative Earnings of Husbands and Wives

Abstract This article focuses primarily on determining the economic consequences of family migration for husbands and wives in matched married-couple families, using data from waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households. The analysis is designed to determine whether or not the return to migration for husbands and wives is similarly affected by their relative earning potential, as predicted by the human-capital model of migration. The studys secondary contributions include its estimation of the effect of moving on earnings for both husbands and wives within matched married-couple families and its avoidance of the problems of self-selection bias and unobserved variable bias associated with cross-sectional models by using panel-data methods. The results indicate—as predicted by the gender-role model of family migration—that the effect of family migration on individual earnings is largely a function of gender: family migration causes an increase in the husbands income and no change in the wifes income even if a wife has a greater earning potential than her husband. Thus, the study does not support the human-capital argument—that family migration decisions are egalitarian and symmetrical, such that each spouses absolute and relative earning power is given equal weight in the migration decision. This research makes a strong statement that the gender-role model of family migration is of greater utility for understanding family migration behavior than the human-capital model of family migration.

Moving and Union Dissolution

This paper examines the effect of migration and residential mobility on union dissolution among married and cohabiting couples. Moving is a stressful life event, and a large, multidisciplinary literature has shown that family migration often benefits one partner (usually the man) more than the other. Even so, no study to date has examined the possible impact of within-nation geographical mobility on union dissolution. We base our longitudinal analysis on retrospective event-history data from Austria. Our results show that couples who move frequently have a significantly higher risk of union dissolution, and we suggest a variety of mechanisms that may explain this.

Migration, Care, and the Linked Lives of Dual-Earner Households:

In this paper we explore how family relations influence the migration decisions of partners in dual-earner households. Specifically, we focus on how care responsibilities link the lives of partners, their children, and their parents, and how these ‘linked lives’ enable and constrain migration. We adopt a grounded theory approach and interview partners in two suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. The results have two implications for the development of family migration theory. First, as dual-earner households make family migration decisions in the context of linked lives, these migration decisions cannot be understood as either economically driven or care driven, being contextualised by both spheres. Second, the importance of intergenerational links may increase the incidence of return migration of later-life dual-earner households.

A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF FAMILY MIGRATION AND THE GENDER GAP IN EARNINGS IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN

This article uses longitudinal data for the United States and Great Britain to examine the impact of residential mobility and childbirth on the earnings of women, their family earnings, and the related division of earnings by gender. This project is the _ rst to compare explicitly the impact of childbirth and family migration on women’s earnings, and it extends prior cross-sectional and longitudinal studies on isolated countries by providing a direct contrast between two major industrialized nations, using comparable measures. The results indicate that families respond in similar ways in both countries to migration and childbirth. In response to both migration and childbirth, women’s earnings fall at the time of the event and recover slowly afterward, but the magnitude of the impact is roughly twice as large for childbirth as for migration. However, migration but not the birth of a child is also associated with a significant increase in total family earnings because of increased husbands’ earnings. As a result, the effect of migration on the relative earnings of wives to husbands is similar to the effect of childbirth. These results suggest that family migration should be given consideration in the literature on the gender earnings gap.

Family Migration and Employment: The Importance of Migration History and Gender

This article uses event history data to specify a model of employment returns to initial migration, onward migration, and return migration among newly married persons in the US. Husbands are more likely to be full-time employed than wives, and being a parent reduces the employment odds among married women. Employment returns to repeated migration differ by gender, with more husbands full-time employed after onward migration and more wives full-time employed after return migration events. We interpret these empirical findings in the context of family migration theory, segmented labor market theory, and gender-based responsibilities.

Internal Migration in Decline

Internal migration rates in the United States have been steadily declining for at least twenty-five years: In 1984, 6.4 percent of the population moved between counties but by 2006—well before the most significant economic crisis since the Great Depression—annual intercounty migration rates had already declined to 4.7 percent and by 2010 to 3.5 percent. Despite the implications of the migration decline, it is poorly recognized and understood. The analysis shows that over the last thirty years, three broad trends have combined to pull migration rates dramatically lower: an increase in dual-worker couples, increased household indebtedness, and the widespread rise of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The first two are probably linked, as households have responded to decreasing real income over the last quarter-century through greater female labor force participation and maintaining current levels of consumption by borrowing ever more heavily from the equity in their homes. Thus, although this analysis shows that the decline in migration rates is not directly linked to the Great Recession, the migration decline is surely linked to the broader macroeconomic shifts that gave rise to it. With respect to the role of ICTs, it is not surprising that as ICTs have transformed nearly everything else across society, their use has affected migration rates. It is presumed that ICTs are providing new forms of mobility that are substituting for migration.

The Migration of Partnered Gays and Lesbians between 1995 and 2000

Abstract This research investigates the interregional migration of partnered gays and lesbians between 1995 and 2000 as the first attempt at understanding the determinants of gay and lesbian migration using data from the Public Use Microdata Sample of the 2000 U.S. Census. Briefly, the findings are as follows. Both partnered gays and lesbians are regionally distributed throughout the United States consistent with the geographical distribution of the entire U.S. population. However, the shifting location of the partnered gay and lesbian population between 1995 and 2000 demonstrates significant variability. The general conclusion to be reached from models of the net migration of the partnered gay and lesbian population in that period is as follows: Partnered gay migration is directed toward moderate-sized urban regions rich in natural amenities without regard for tolerance toward gay lifestyles or the absolute or relative size of the partnered gay community. Partnered lesbian migration is focused on less-populous regions with a large, existing, partnered lesbian population. The role of natural amenities, the tolerance for lesbian lifestyles, and population density are not significant in determining partnered lesbian migration. The only trait partnered gay and lesbian migrations have in common is in their move toward less populous regions.

The Changing Intrametropolitan Location of High-poverty Neighbourhoods in the US, 1990-2000

The purpose of this research is to explore the changing geographical distribution of high-poverty neighbourhoods both between and within American metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2000. Of particular concern is the relative shift in the number of high-poverty neighbourhoods between central-city, inner-ring and outer-ring suburbs. A classification scheme is developed for identifying these three types of area. The results indicate that there has been an increase in the number of high-poverty neighbourhoods in the urban cores of economically stagnant old industrial cities of the Northeast and an increase in the number of high-poverty inner-ring neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, metropolitan areas in Californias Central Valley and a few selected rapidly growing Sunbelt metropolitan areas. The analysis indicates that an increase in the number of urban core high-poverty neighbourhoods is linked to the general health of a metropolitan areas economy and that an increase in the number of inner-ring high-poverty neighbourhoods is linked to rapid population growth.

The Effect of Long-Distance Family Migration and Motherhood on Partnered Women's Labour-Market Activity Rates in Great Britain and the USA

Many studies of long-distance family migration demonstrate that female partners are often disenfranchised in the labour market. One factor that has not been fully considered is the role of children. Heterosexual couples may be more likely to migrate in favour of the male ‘breadwinners’ career if the couple have children, or are planning to commence childrearing in the foreseeable future. However, little work seems to have examined this empirically. The authors focus on the influence of ‘motherhood’ in different national contexts, using comparable census microdata for Great Britain and the United States. They test whether apparent ‘tied migration’ effects may in fact be influenced by family decisions related to childbearing/childrearing, and two sets of modelling results are provided. First, they examine whether the effects of long-distance family migration on womens labour-market status is influenced by the presence or absence of children of different ages. Second, they conduct the same analysis for women who have a high-status occupation. The results demonstrate that women in families with young children are most likely to be out of employment after family migration. A smaller, but similar, tied-migration effect exists for families with older children and families with no children. The same pattern exists for women in high-status occupations. Tied migration appears to influence womens labour-market status equally in Great Britain and the United States, regardless of the presence or absence of children.