An Analysis of Migration Patterns and Local Government Policy toward Public Education in the United States

The objective of this study is two-fold. First, it seeks empirically to ascertain the possible impact of differential local government policies toward (commitments to) public education on migration patterns. Second, it seeks to ascertain, simultaneously, the possible impact of migration patterns on local government policies toward public education. Section II analyses the problem by examining gross in-migration patterns to metropolitan areas over the 1965-1970 time period. Section III deals with net in-migration to metropolitan areas for the 1960-1970 period. Overall, the net in-migration results are entirely compatible with those for gross in-migration, that is, empirically speaking, the causality between in-migration and local government public education spending per full-time student is bi-directional.