Internal Migration and Longevity

Jiaxin Shi , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research & Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford
Jason Fletcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Internal migration has been fundamental to American culture and economic growth, yet its relationship with population health remains understudied. While international migrants show longevity advantages in most contemporary societies, it has been unclear whether internal migrants also live longer than nonmigrants. Understanding internal migrant mortality has become increasingly important given the recent declines in internal migration in the United States (US). The US provides a particularly valuable case for studying these dynamics due to its historically high internal migration rates and complex bidirectional movement patterns. Using newly available population data with over 12 million individual death records for cohorts born between 1912 and 1930, this study reveals a substantial mortality advantage among internal migrants—equivalent to 10–20 years of mortality improvement for the total US population. We find evidence of place effects from both the origin and destination, with county of destination being more important than county of origin. However, most of the observed migrant mortality advantage seems to be attributable to selection mechanisms. We also demonstrate that internal migration increases mortality disparities across counties by 20% for men and 28% for women.

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 Presented in Session 85. Migrant Mortality