Interregional Migration and Implications for Regional Resilience

Regional resilience is a growing topic that encompasses many ideas, including what factors reduce the impact of negative shocks, or enhance a region’s ability to recover or adapt. In this chapter we examine the relationship between patterns of migration during periods of recession and the overall economic resilience of an area. Determining whether the characteristics that attract migrants also contribute to an area’s resilience is an important question to policymakers who seek to improve their local area’s resilience to economic shocks. Our principal finding is that during an economic downturn migrants are less likely to move to an area with a different industrial composition than that of their origin county. We interpret this finding as evidence that migrants face frictions which prevent them from moving to counties with relatively high performing industries and instead respond to economic shocks by moving to a county with the same industrial sectors, but that may have been less-affected by the recession. When we examine the factors which contribute to the economic resilience of an area, we find that the characteristics which contribute to resilience during a recession are different than those that are significant in other periods. Specifically, during a recession, the role of a county’s industrial structure is the primary factor that contributes to the resilience of an area. Together, these findings imply that a county’s industrial composition is a driving force behind both migration during a recession and the economic resilience of an area.