Neighborhood Quality and Climate as Factors in U.S. Net Migration Patterns, 1974–76

Abstract . Two determinants of net migration into Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas in 1974–76 are established. First, using objective indices of the quality of neighborhoods (NQL), such as crime rates, earlier research failed to find a significant relation between NQL and migration. Using OLS regressions, we find that variations in perceived NQL have a significant effect on net migration. Our measure of perceived NQL is based on newly available Census survey data. An appendix contains our NQL indices for 57 SMSAs. Second, we find summer humidity, in addition to winter temperature, has a highly significant effect on migration patterns.