Migration, Sources of Income, and Community Change in the Nonmetropolitan Northwest

During the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, the nonmetropolitan Northwest grew quite rapidly, narrowing the gap between the growth rates of the metropolitan Northwest, and oupacing national rates. This growth was largely the result of in-migration from regional and national metropolitan areas. Traditional economic base theory does not explain the recent growth, as employment levels in in the region's basic industries continue to stagnate and decline, and the sources of income for these in-migrants remain a mystery. This paper utilizes data from the 1990 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) to determine the extent to which metropolitan-origin migrants are measurably different from oldtime nonmetropolitan residents on certain socioeconomic variables, in an attempt to understand the ways in which the newcomers survive financially. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) shows that newcomers are younger, earn less in wages and salary, receive more nonearnings income, and reside in more valuable housing compared with the resident population. Discriminant analysis shows that differences in the earned income measures are largely explained by age differences, while the nonearnings income and value of residence remainsignificantly higher for the metropolitan origin migrants even when age and earned income are controlled. While the analysis indicates that measurable socioeconomic differences do exist between the two populations, it appears that the current wave of growth and change in the nonmetropolitan Northwest is much more complicated than a simple newcomer-oldtimer dichotomy.

Keywords::

• Nonmetropolitan population growth
• “New West”
• nonearnings income
• urban-rural migration