Interstate Mobility Research Articles

Accommodation History and Continuity of Care in Patients with Psychosis

The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between accommodation history and management outcome in patients with psychosis. Demographic information, diagnosis and an accommodation history were taken from patients with psychosis accepted for case management by the Inner West Area Mental Health Service over a 12-month period. The patients were followed up 2 years later to determine their continuity of care and discharge outcome. One hundred 42 patients completed the assessments. Forty-eight percent of patients had spent at least 1 day in a homeless setting in the previous 12 months. Twenty-two percent of patients had long-term (between 2 and 12 months) and six percent chronic (more than 12 months) homelessness. The duration of previous homelessness was significantly inversely correlated with the length of engagement with the service, continuity of psychiatric care at discharge or likelihood of transfer to primary care. Previous interstate mobility was significantly associated with discontinuity of care at discharge. A history of homelessness is common in patients with psychosis using inner urban mental health services and is associated with poorer engagement with psychiatric services.

Our “Increasingly Mobile Society”? The Curious Persistence of a False Belief

We call attention to the widespread belief that the United States is an "increasingly mobile society," despite the fact that overall mobility has generally declined since about 1950, and interstate mobility has generally not increased during the same period. We review and extend past research documenting these mobility trends. We describe population-level mobility for people of all ages as well as for several adult age groups, using published data from the U.S. Current Population Survey. We use simple regression methods to estimate the size and significance of mobility trends. Overall mobility rates have declined for individuals of all ages and among all age groups. The largest average annual declines occur for 20- to 29-year-olds, although the rate of decline for those aged 65 and older is also large. Interstate mobility has declined slightly or remained constant, except among adults between 45 and 64 years old. Although there may be good reasons to worry about the future of family care provided to elderly individuals, increased geographic mobility does not appear to be one of them. We speculate on reasons why the false belief persists.

"Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity": New Evidence on the Internal Migration of Americans, 1850-2000

The quantity and character of internal migration in the American past is a contentious historiographical issue. Over a century ago, Frederick Jackson Turner pointed to westward migration as a safety valve that profoundly affected the nature of the Republic. With the closing of the frontier, Turner predicted, the population flow to the West would decline.1 Turner’s twentieth-century critics argued that the greatest American population movement was not westward expansion, but rather urbanization, which accelerated throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning in the 1960s, social historians using new quantitative approaches fleshed out the critique of Turner, arguing that high migration to and between urban areas in the nineteenth century did not result in improved economic opportunity. This article uses new evidence to reevaluate internal migration in the American past. Our three major findings are consistent with Turner’s interpretation. First, we identify a U-shaped pattern of change: the nineteenth century had the highest overall levels of migration, followed by a decline in the first half of the twentieth century and a resurgence after World War II. Thus, by the time Turner wrote about the closing of the frontier, a dramatic decline in geographic mobility was already under way. The highest mobility in American history occurred during the first half of the nineteenth century, and there was a steady decline in interstate mobility until well into the twentieth century. Second, we show that the high levels of nineteenth-century migration resulted from long-distance westward migration to farms, whereas the high migration of the late twentieth century can be ascribed to white suburbanization and black

Assessing changes in interstate migration patterns of the United States elderly population, 1965-1990

This study examines temporal changes in elderly interstate migration in the United States. All of the interstate movers who were 60 and over are selected from the Public Use Micro-Samples (PUMS) of the 1970, 1980 and 1990 censuses, and three interstate mobility tables are constructed. A triply-constrained gravity model is used to compare the propensities of moving to southern destinations while controlling population sizes for origins, destinations and sample years. The results show that the propensity for moving from cold regions to warm regions has declined by 2.5% since 1980. Elderly migrants from the major retiree-sending regions have begun to lose their ties to the popular southern migration destinations (e.g. Florida, Arizona, California), and, for the most part, this process started in the late 1980s. However, unlike the temporal pattern of the United Kingdom, where elderly migrants have started to move to various inland destinations, US states that registered a persistent gain in the share of elderly migrants are still in the south or southwest, and they are the new competitors to the traditionally established retirement destinations. Newly emergent interstate elderly migration trends can be characterised as geographically focused decline and focused growth. Even though this trend has not caused a reduction in the number of elderly movers to the traditional retirement magnet states, it may result in the saturation of long-term care facilities in the traditional retirement states while causing shortages in new retirement states. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Assessing changes in interstate migration patterns of the United States elderly population, 1965–1990

This study examines temporal changes in elderly interstate migration in the United States. All of the interstate movers who were 60 and over are selected from the Public Use Micro-Samples (PUMS) of the 1970, 1980 and 1990 censuses, and three interstate mobility tables are constructed. A triply-constrained gravity model is used to compare the propensities of moving to southern destinations while controlling population sizes for origins, destinations and sample years. The results show that the propensity for moving from cold regions to warm regions has declined by 2.5% since 1980. Elderly migrants from the major retiree-sending regions have begun to lose their ties to the popular southern migration destinations (e.g. Florida, Arizona, California), and, for the most part, this process started in the late 1980s. However, unlike the temporal pattern of the United Kingdom, where elderly migrants have started to move to various inland destinations, US states that registered a persistent gain in the share of elderly migrants are still in the south or southwest, and they are the new competitors to the traditionally established retirement destinations. Newly emergent interstate elderly migration trends can be characterised as geographically focused decline and focused growth. Even though this trend has not caused a reduction in the number of elderly movers to the traditional retirement magnet states, it may result in the saturation of long-term care facilities in the traditional retirement states while causing shortages in new retirement states. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Social Geography of Interstate Mobility and Persistence

We introduce a new model of geographic mobility that maps the underlying contours of sociocultural space [in the United States] after purging the confounding effects of distance inertia contiguity and population size....We argue that known features of the social landscape should be entered explicitly into mobility specifications. This approach yields new insights into (1) the net holding power of regions subregions and states; (2) the effects of macro-level variables on propensities for immobility and exchange; and (3) influence of seemingly minor variations in the shape of regions on gross patterns of immobility and exchange. (EXCERPT)

Environmental Regulation and Economic Development: the Movement of Chemical Production Among States

he pursuit of capital, jobs, and tax base i.e., economic development-has engendered competition among the American states to attract, keep and enlarge their share of industrial resources. Interstate competition for economic development has, in turn, engendered a burgeoning body of research into the relationship between costs of government and firms' interstate allocation of developmental resources. Most of this research has focused on firms' plant-location decisions (Hansen 1984; Stermnes 1984). A general model of firm location decisions (cf. Humberger 1983; Schmenner 1982) posits the location choice of profit maximizing firms to be a function of the availability of markets, labor costs, energy costs, raw material costs and costs of government: Costs of government and other political factors have consistently been found to be less important influences on firms' location decisions than economic variables such as available markets, characteristics of the labor force, and other direct costs of production (Kieschnik 1981; Wheat 1986); however, state and local policies may affect the marginal cost of production for firms at a given location (McClure 1969; 1970). Thus, once a firm has decided to locate in a particular region on the basis of non-governmental factors (e.g., access to markets and labor and energy costs), government costs may become an important factor in the choice among jurisdictions within that region (Wasylenko 1980; 1981; Kale 1984; Feiock 1987). If so, states may use marginal costs of taxation, regulation, and other governmental costs as incentives in the intra-regional competition among jurisdictions that share comparable nongovernmental costs of production (Hansen 1984; Hellman, Wassall, and Folk 1978). Embedded within the general question of whether costs-of-government affect the interstate mobility and location of developmental resources is the more specific question of whether state-imposed costs of environmen-

Indochinese Resettlement in the United States

Abstract Recently there has been a dramatic increase in the flow of Southeast Asian refugees into the U.S., and these refugees are becoming increasingly concentrated in a small number of Western states. This distribution is the result of the refugees’high interstate mobility and of the family reunification criterion used to admit and resettle refugees. The states in which the refugees are concentrating tend to have high public assistance benefit levels, lenient public assistance eligibility requirements, large Asian communities, mild winters, and low unemployment rates. This unplanned spatial clustering of the refugee population calls into question the effectiveness and the desirability of the original dispersal policy.

Occupational Licensing and the Interstate Mobility of Professionals

Occupational Licensing and the Interstate Mobility of Professionals

Geographic migration within Sweden, 1952–1966

Abstract Geographic human migration in Sweden has been substantial in the three decades since the end of World War II. During recent years, more than 200,000 persons have moved from one Swedish county to another in the course of one year. 1 This is about 2.6 percent of the Swedish population, somewhat less than the interstate mobility rate in the United States, but greater than the migration rate observed in many European countries, for example, West Germany. Since much movement occurs within counties, the actual number of annual migrants is far larger. Moreover, the statistics on internal intercounty migration fails to take account of the substantial international migration involving Sweden. Swedish immigration relative to the size of the native born population approaches the levels reached in the United States at the peak of immigration to that country. 2 Actually, a greater proportion of population increase in Sweden during the past 25 years can be explained by international in-migration than is true for any 25-year period in American history after 1800.

Effects of Professional Licensing Arrangements on Interstate Labor Mobility and Resource Allocation

Effects of Professional Licensing Arrangements on Interstate Labor Mobility and Resource Allocation