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Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access published online on May 13, 2009
Journal of Economic Geography, doi:10.1093/jeg/lbp020
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Internal migration and the earnings of married couples in the United States{dagger}

McKinley L. Blackburn*

*Department of Economics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. email <blackbrn{at}moore.sc.edu>

JEL classifications: J12, J61

Economic models of migration recognize that potential changes in income are an important factor in the decision to change geographic location within a country's borders. For married couples, gains need not occur for both spouses, and ‘tied movers’ may on average see their relative earnings fall as a result of internal migration. Previous research suggesting that wives appear on average to be tied movers primarily dates back to the 1970s. Examining data from the 1990s, I find a result similar to this earlier research, with wives losing on average about 20% of their pre-migration earnings. Much of this decline is associated with a decline in work hours for wives. The effect seems to be short-lived, not clearly persisting into the second year following migration.

Keywords: migration, tied movers, earnings changes, geographic mobility
Date submitted: 29 December 2008     Date accepted: 14 April 2009


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