Understanding the effects of homeownership and regional unemployment levels on internal migration during the economic crisis in Spain

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to understand better the effects of homeownership and regional unemployment levels on inter-provincial migration during the recent economic crisis in Spain. It uses rich individual-level microdata from the last two Spanish censuses (2001–2011) to study migration. The findings suggest that regional unemployment levels do not have a strong impact on internal migration in the period analyzed. However, homeownership is a key explanatory factor of immobility, which became more important in 2011 compared with 2001. This immobility effect of homeownership is stronger in depressed regions, which suggests that some people may be trapped in their dwellings, or the security of homeownership becomes essential when the structural conditions are unfavourable.

KEYWORDS:

• inter-provincial migration
• economic recession
• unemployment rate
• homeownership

JEL:

• R23

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Isabel Palomares-Linares http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6795-2987

Maarten van Ham http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2106-0702

Notes

1. The Rotational Panel Survey is conducted by the Spanish Institute of Statistics four times per year using a sample of 65,000 households.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this paper was funded by the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, research project ‘Procesos de reconfiguración social metropolitana’ [grant number CSO2014-55780-C3-3-P].