Stranded! How Rising Inequality Suppressed US Migration and Hurt Those Left Behind

June 3, 2019

Preview Citation

Format: Chicago

Tamim Bayoumi, and Jelle Barkema. Stranded! How Rising Inequality Suppressed US Migration and Hurt Those Left Behind, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2019) accessed November 23, 2024

Disclaimer: IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Summary

Using bilateral data on migration across US metro areas, we find strong evidence that increasing house price and income inequality has reduced long distance migration, the type most linked to jobs. For those migrating uphill, from a less to a more prosperous location, lower mobility is driven by increasing house price inequlity, as the disincentives from higher house prices dominate the incentives from higher earnings. By contrast, increasing income inequality drives the fall in downhill migration as the disincentives from lower earnings dominate the incentives from lower house prices. The model underlines the plight of those trapped in decaying metro areas—those “left behind”.

Subject: Housing prices, Income inequality, Migration, National accounts, Personal income, Population and demographics, Prices

Keywords: B. migration result, Destination increase migration, Economic, Global, House price, House price differential, Housing prices, Income differential, Income divergence, Income inequality, Inequality, Life-cycle migration pattern, Long-distance migration, Migration, Migration data, Migration flow, Opportunity, Personal income, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

34
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2019/122
Stock No:

WPIEA2019122
ISBN:

9781498311373
ISSN:

1018-5941

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