ABSTRACT

We aim to answer whether expected occupational gains motivated rural-urban and rural-rural migration in nineteenth-century Norway. Human capital theory indicates that the higher expected gains, the more prone an individual will be to migrate. We use a micro-level data set of over 42,000 rural sons linked to their fathers based on 1865 and 1900 Norwegian censuses and employ a switching endogenous regression model controlling for the endogeneity of migration decisions. Our main finding is that the effect of expected occupational gain on the probability of rural-urban migration differs according to the rural sons’ destination and parental occupational status: the sons from low status families were migrating motivated by expected occupational advancement. Sons from families with higher occupational status were motivated by expected occupational gains only in the case of rural-urban migration.

摘要

我们旨在回答在 19 世纪的挪威，预期的职业收益是否推动了农村-城市和农村-农村迁移。人力资本理论表明，预期收益越高，个人越容易迁移。我们使用基于 1865 年和 1900 年挪威人口普查的 42,000 多名农村儿子与其父亲相关的微观数据集，并采用切换内生回归模型控制迁移决策的内生性。我们的主要发现是，预期职业收益对农村-城市迁移概率的影响因农村儿子的目的地和父母的职业地位而异：来自低地位家庭的儿子迁移的动机是预期的职业进步。