Improved measures for the cross-national comparison of age profiles of internal migration

Abstract

We develop and demonstrate the application of a concise set of measures intended to encapsulate key features of the age profile of internal migration and highlight the significant differences that exist between nations in these profiles. Model schedules have been the most common method of comparing internal migration patterns but issues related to the estimation and interpretation of their parameters hinder their use for cross-national comparison. We demonstrate that the interpretation of exponential coefficients as rates of ascent and descent does not best reflect the slopes of migration age profiles, and we propose more consistent measures based on the rate of change in migration intensity. We demonstrate, through correlation and factor analysis, that most of the inter-country variance in migration age profiles is captured by the age at and intensity of peak migration. The application of these two indicators to 25 countries reveals significant differences between regions.

Keywords:

• internal migration
• age patterns
• model migration schedule
• comparative measures
• cross-national comparison

Notes

1. All the authors are at the School of Geography, Planning & Environmental Management, The University of Queensland. Corresponding author: Aude Bernard, Chamberlain Building, Queensland Centre for Population Research, School of Geography, Planning & Environmental Management, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

2. The work reported in this paper forms part of the IMAGE project and the support of the Australian Research Council under ARC Discovery Project (DP110101363) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to express their thanks for the insightful comments and suggestions provided by three anonymous referees.