Working Paper

Voting with your feet in the United Kingdom: using cross-migration rates to estimate relative living standards

Abstract: This paper reexamines and extends the literature on the use of migration rates to estimate compensating differentials as measures of regional quality of life. I estimate an interregional migration regression for the UK and use the results to measure regional quality of life and standard of living. The results suggest a North-South divide within England, and that Scotland and Wales have relatively high levels of both. The results also lead to a rejection of regional standard-of-living equivalence (long-run regional equilibrium) in the UK

Keywords: Emigration and immigration; Quality of life; Great Britain;

https://doi.org/10.20955/wp.1999.006

Status: Published in Papers in Regional Science, January 2001, 80(1), pp. 1-23

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Part of Series: Working Papers

Publication Date: 1999

Number: 1999-006