PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Zachary Ward
TI  - Internal Migration, Education, and Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from American History
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.58.2.0619-10265R2
DP  - 2020 Oct 12
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 0619-10265R2
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2020/10/02/jhr.58.2.0619-10265R2.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2020/10/02/jhr.58.2.0619-10265R2.full
AB  - To what extent does internal migration lead to upward mobility? Using within-brother variation and a new linked dataset from the early 20th century, I show that internal migration led to significant gains in economic status. On average, the effect of migration was three-to-four times the effect of one year of education; for those raised in poorer households, the effect was up to ten times that of education. The evidence suggests that internal migration was a key strategy for intergenerational progress in a context of rapid industrialization, large rural-to-urban flows and wide interregional income gaps.