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From L.A. to Boise: How Migration Has Changed During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2023

Peter Haslag Open the ORCID record for Peter Haslag [Opens in a new window]  and
Daniel Weagley
Peter Haslag*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management
Daniel Weagley
Affiliation:
Georgia Institute of Technology Scheller College of Business [email protected]
*
[email protected] (corresponding author)
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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We examine how broad changes in work arrangements and lifestyles brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have affected households’ location decisions. Using data on over 360,000 residential, interstate moves over the last 5 years, we find that more than 12% of moves were directly influenced by the pandemic. Among pandemic-influenced movers, over 15% of households cite that remote work influenced their move. Lifestyle-related (job-related) migration increased (decreased) significantly, particularly for the set of households who are likely to have access to remote work. We further find that these changes in migration patterns are positively related to post-pandemic economic growth.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis , Volume 59 , Issue 5 , August 2024 , pp. 2068 - 2098
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington

Footnotes

We are grateful to UniGroup and, especially, Eily Cummings for providing us the data. We thank an anonymous referee and Jarrad Harford (the editor) for constructive comments in the review process. We also thank Jan Brueckner, Jonathan Dingel, Andra Ghent, Andrii Parkhomenko, and Christopher Smith for their helpful comments. Any remaining errors are our own.

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