Forecasting Interstate Migration with Limited Data: A Demographic-Economic Approach

Abstract

The limitations of available migration data preclude a time-series approach to modeling interstate migration. The method presented here combines aspects of the demographic and economic approaches to forecasting migration in a manner compatible with existing data. Migration rates are modeled to change in response to changes in economic conditions. When applied to recently constructed data on migration based on income tax returns and then compared to standard demographic projections, the demographic—economic approach has a 20% lower total error in forecasting net migration by state for cohorts of laborforce age.