The Redistribution and Socioeconomic Mobility of Immigrants in America’s Interior

Erica J. Mullen, Brown University

This paper addresses two gaps in the migration literature: (1) the need for longitudinal microdata to study the impact of migration and (2) the absence of studies that analyze whether immigrants in “new destinations” in the U.S. are doing better or worse socioeconomically in those places. The 1996 and 2001 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation are used here to track the before- and after-migration incomes of natives and immigrants in the U.S. using descriptive and multivariate regression techniques. The goal is to assess whether immigrants who migrated between metropolitan areas during the late 1990s and early 2000s are better or worse off economically compared to (1) before they migrated, (2) non-migrant immigrants, and (3) native migrants. Destination types are categorized by traditional/new destination status and also by size. This research is necessary for understanding how immigrants in different parts of the U.S. are incorporating socioeconomically.