Modelling the Spatial Nature of Household Residential Mobility within Municipalities in Colombia

Abstract

In this paper, we examine household residential mobility within Colombian municipalities and determine whether the factors that trigger residential movement vary across the country. Using Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) and detailed data from the 2005 Census for all municipalities in Colombia, our analysis takes into account the spatial variation in the relationship between household residential mobility and the associated housing, socioeconomic and environmental factors derived from theory and previous empirical research. Our findings demonstrate that household residential mobility is strongly and positively associated with living conditions, age and income, and negatively associated with homeownership and household composition within municipalities. The comparison of global (Ordinary Least Squares regression) and local (GWR) parameter estimates reveals the presence of a non-stationary effect on household residential mobility for the predictor variables considered, and highlights the importance of local variation of the relationships. In addition to contributing to the debate on the dynamics of residential mobility in Colombia, the study results have implications for effective policy-making with regard to urban expansion and settlement of various groups.