This one-year award provides support for US-UK cooperative research on the causes and consequences of family migration. The collaboration involves Thomas J. Cooke of the University of Connecticut, Paul Boyle of the University of Leeds, and Keith Halfacree of the University of Wales-Swansea. The motivation for this research is the conflicting empirical evidence regarding the effect of family migration on the labor market, in particular, the achievements of married women in labor markets. While most research demonstrates that residential decision-making processes within the family often serve to reinforce the marginal socioeconomic position of women, more recent research indicates that in particular contexts migration may be a socially and economically liberating experience for married women. The investigators will use individual-level data from the Samples of Anonymised Records (SARs) of the 1991 British Census and the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the 1990 US Census to investigate family migration on married, and cohabiting, women and men.
The US and British investigators have complementary expertise in migration research and extensive knowledge of the PUMS and SARs data respectively. The project will advance understanding of the linkages between geographic mobility and socioeconomic mobility in general, and of the socioeconomic position of women.
