Quality of life, amenities and recent migration across the largest US metropolitan areas

Migration in the wider context of regional growth and change is examined. The literature clarifying the roles of natural and human amenities in regional development is first highlighted. Indices are calculated for both types of amenities across America’s 25 largest metropolitan areas. Some places like Los Angeles and San Francisco rank highly on both (standardised) amenity dimensions while other places, like Baltimore and St. Louis, rank lowly on both. By design the distributions of these two indices are independent. A series of log-linear regression models assesses these amenity effects in the recent migration across the 25 largest metropolitan areas. A gravity-type model is initially used to assess the differential effects of metropolitan size, measured by employment and the distance between each metropolitan area. The incidence of natural and human amenities at the various origins and destinations is next included in the estimation. The robustness of the estimation is examined after other initial conditions have been adopted to control for the variation in wage levels (nominal and real) and unemployment rates across the metropolitan areas.