Political Attitudes and Disease Threat: Regional Pathogen Stress Is Associated With Conservative Ideology Only for Older Individuals

What environmental factors are associated with individual differences in political ideology, and do such associations change over time? We examine whether reductions in pathogen prevalence in U.S. states over the past 60 years are associated with reduced associations between parasite stress and conservatism. We report a positive association between infection levels and conservative ideology in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. However, this correlation reduces from the 1980s onwards. These results suggest that the ecological influence of infectious diseases may be larger for older people who grew up (or whose parents grew up) during earlier time periods. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the political affiliation of 45,000 Facebook users, and find a positive association between self-reported political affiliation and regional pathogen stress for older (>40 years) but not younger individuals. It is concluded that the influence of environmental pathogen stress on ideology may have reduced over time.

Return Migration in Later Life in Mainland China: Motivations, Patterns, and Influences

This study focuses on patterns and influences of return migration behavior in mainland China, (n = 468 individuals ages 50 and above) from a life-course perspective, using the 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Utilizing spatial analysis, we found return migration geographic patterns mainly from the frontier and urban centers to central provinces, involving migrant workers returning to their rural homes. We used logistic linear modeling to examine the correlations between personal attributes (e.g., age, gender, marital status), environmental aspects (e.g., community characteristics, housing conditions, geographic attributes), and return migration. Historical and socioeconomic factors affected return migration, including availability parents to provide care, declining personal health, improved housing infrastructures, and better access to community services. Our findings also show the productive social role of caregiving as a reason for migration, calling for flexible policies in China's social welfare system, comprehensive senior living facilities, and adequate support systems in rural communities.

Changing Spatial Interconnectivity during the "Great American Migration Slowdown": A Decomposition of Intercounty Migration Rates, 1990-2010

Prior research on the "Great American Migration Slowdown," or the declining rate of U.S. internal migration in recent decades, is dominated by two research foci. The first is concerned with the determinants of the migration slowdown. The second is concerned with spatial heterogeneity in the migration slowdown in and across places. With respect to the aim of this paper, many studies of spatial heterogeneity in the migration slowdown have implicitly raised questions about whether and to what extent places are connected to one another by migration flows, or the spatial interconnectivity of migration. The spatial interconnectivity of migration is a concrete manifestation of underlying spatial interdependence among places, and, as such, deserves to be explicitly unpacked to further our understanding of the migration slowdown. Using county-to-county migration flow data from the Internal Revenue Service and a novel application of Das Gupta's demographic standardization and decomposition procedures, we document changes in the spatial interconnectivity of migration during the migration slowdown between 1990 and 2010. We show that counties became more connected to one another by migration over time, and that the increasing spatial interconnectivity of migration helped to keep the migration slowdown from slowing further. We also document changes in the spatial interconnectivity of migration for four types of migration flows: metro-to-metro, nonmetro-to-metro, metro-to-nonmetro, and nonmetro-to-nonmetro. Our work further elucidates the characteristics of the migration slowdown by describing changes in the spatial interconnectivity of migration. It also raises new questions for future research about the determinants and consequences of these changes.

Gendering Interprovincial Migration in China

Migration is a gendered phenomenon, best understood as a series of relationships between socioeconomic factors and gender. Gender differences in migration efficiencies are investigated using the 1990 Census data in China. Results indicate that, although male migration rates are higher, female migration is more efficient in the sense that it contributes to greater population redistribution than male migration. Reflecting different economic and social roles, women are more likely to state social and family reasons for moving while men indicate economic motivations. In terms of the geography of movement, women are more sensitive than men to perceived and expected regional differences in economic opportunities, especially in rural areas. Job opportunities created in urban areas and by foreign enterprises are more attractive to male migrants. Development of light manufacturing industries and the benefits derived from the presence of previous migrants draw female more than male migrants.

Disciplinary Perspectives on Later-Life Migration in the Core Journals of Social Gerontology

PURPOSE

The authors examine the bibliographic structure of recent research on later-life migration, highlighting the contributions of particular journals and disciplines.

DESIGN AND METHODS

The authors identify the primary journals publishing research in this area, including a set of four core journals within the field of social gerontology. They evaluate the disciplinary affiliations of authors publishing in the core journals and the extent to which those journals cite relevant research published elsewhere.

RESULTS

Geographical and economic perspectives on later-life migration are underrepresented within the core journals of social gerontology. In particular, major articles published outside the core journals are seldom cited within those journals.

IMPLICATIONS

Although the core journals of social gerontology account for over a third of the recent literature on later-life migration, they present only a partial (chiefly sociological) perspective on the subject.

Geographical pattern analysis of income migration in the United States

"How one conceptualises the impacts of migration depends on whether one takes the viewpoint of aggregate area-level income change, of per capita change, or of longer-term (future earnings) change. Several empirical analytical measures are proposed in order to conceptualise the various income impacts of migration.... [A] decomposition procedure is developed for examining how the changes in per capita income of states reflect three different income differentials: those between (a) in-migrants and 'stayers', (b) out-migrants and 'stayers', and (c) in-migrants and out-migrants. Examination of these measures, and of typologies based on them, highlights how income migration significantly and differentially impacts upon U.S. states. The methods are illustrated here in the context of an important new American data source: the 1993-94 migrant income data released by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service."

Contribution of the demographic factor to the migration turnarounds in Japan, Sweden and Canada

"It is well known that similar changes of migration pattern occurred during recent decades in most developed countries; core regions recorded a greatly decreased net in-migration in the 1970s, but increased net in-migration in the 1980s. Based on shift-share analysis of the migration data of Japan, Sweden and Canada, this paper reveals that changing cohort size, especially related to the fertility fluctuation of baby boom and bust, has played an important role in the turnarounds. Furthermore, it is elucidated from a series of correlation analyses that this demographic factor was closely linked with labour-market restructuring in terms of industrial/occupational employment changes."

Measuring spatial focusing in a migration system

Equality indexes used in other geographical contexts may be used to gauge the degree of spatial focusing in an entire migration system or within the gross in- and out-migration fields of specific regions. They provide useful indicators of overall shifts in the patterns of interregional migration and can help give insight into the population redistributive roles played by specific regions. Perhaps the most common equality index used to measure income distribution is the Gini coefficient, yet it appears almost never to have been applied in migration research. In this paper we set forth a variety of Gini indexes to be used for different migration analyses and illustrate their application with recent data on U.S. interstate movements. We argue that the Gini index provides some singularly useful insights that differ from those afforded by other measures more commonly found to date in the migration analyst’s toolkit.

Demographic influences on migration

"This paper explores the effects of demographic change on migration [within the United States] through an examination of migration rates of different age groups and cohorts over time, and the effect on total migration flows of the ageing of regional populations....[The author concludes that] the human investment framework provides a powerful analytical device for analysing migration decision-making at different stages of the life course. Labour supply pressure is advanced as a significant demographic influence on labour mobility." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND GER)

Short-term dynamics of the U.S. interstate migration system, 1980-1988

"This paper identifies short-term fluctuations in the [U.S.] interstate migration system using annual state-to-state migration flow data from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records for the period, 1980 to 1988. Measures of migration efficiency are employed to indicate the net redistribution of population between states relative to the size of underlying gross interstate flows. Three findings stand out: (1) migration was more effective in redistributing the population in years of economic retrenchment than during periods of growth and expansion, (2) the dominant pattern of population redistribution shifted from a core-periphery configuration evident in the 1970s and early 1980s to a bi-coastal distribution by the mid-1980s, and (3) the most dramatic event of the 1980s was the oil glut and decline in oil prices and profits which ravaged the economies of energy states in the West South Central and Mountain regions....Overall, results demonstrate the high degree of temporal and spatial volatility in the U.S. interstate migration system."