Qualitative Selection in Cityward Migration

Abstract

Study of rural-city migration in a sample in Albemarle County, Virginia, representing three social classes-upper, middle, and lower-shows that the upper group sustained decidedly the largest proportionate loss to the cities, the middle group the next heaviest, and the lower group the least. the educational training of the possible migrants among the upper group is strikingly higher than that of the middle and lower groups, which also show a marked difference in this respect. Similarly, those from the upper group, and to a less extent in the middle group, enter mainly the business, professional, and clerical occupations, while the migrants from the lower groups concentrate in occupations calling for unskilled, semi-skilled, and skiller labor. The attitudes of parents in the three groups with regard to their sons' following farming, in considerable measure, parallel the direction of preponderant migration in the particular group.