Some Determinants of Interstate Migration of Blacks, 1965-1970

The results of this study for the 50 states imply that considerations of distance play an important role in the migration decision of blacks, with the distance variable being statistically significant at the five percent level or better in 80 percent of the cases. The racial composition variable was statistically significant at the one percent level in 97 percent of the cases. This would seem to imply, as hypothesized in Section II above, that black mi­grants tend to move to those areas where the ratio of blacks to total population is higher, ceteris paribus. The income variable was statistically significant at the five per cent level or better in only 25 percent of the cases and at the ten percent level or better in only 49 percent of the cases. This apparent insensitivity of migration to income has been found in other studies and has been shown to be entirely compatible with the conventional wage rat e analysis. Finally, we turn to the welfare variable. This is a variable is ignored in migration studies to date, but this may be an important oversight. In particular, analysis shows that the welfare variable was statistically significant at the five per cent level or better in 48 percent of the 50 cases. Thus, we infer that welfare-as one specific form of income-may be a very important determinant of black migration and perhaps may be more important than even per capita personal black income in influencing the migration decision of blacks