Do more educated workers migrate more? Findings from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship of migration between capital regions and non-capital regions and the level of human capital in Korea using the method of multinomial logistic regression. This paper aims to show whether the high level of human capital of migrants who move to capital regions statistically differs from the other migrants. For analysis, this paper uses the 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012 panel data from Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS). The analysis is divided into two parts of migration based on the region of origin: the migration of individuals who live in non-capital regions and the migration of individuals who live in capital region. In this paper, we consider personal characteristics such as educational attainment and occupations as an indicator of human capital of individual, gender, age, and marriage status as explanatory variables. Our empirical finding is that the educational attainment of individual representing a level of human capital significantly affects the migration behavior moving from non-capital regions to capital regions. According to analysis of migration from Gyeonggi and Incheon to Seoul, the migration within capital regions, individuals who engage in occupation with high skilled and non-manual are more likely to move to Seoul capital regions where favorable conditions for workers in terms of higher wage and better job opportunities can provide. Those results can be understood in the context of human capital theory to maximize personal socioeconomic utilities by migrating to capital regions.