| The purpose of this study is to examine empirically the influences of selected economic, demographic, and educational factors on male and female interstate migration decision in Mexico. The study is an extended version of the Todaro labor migration theory which postulates that migration decisions are largely influenced by the probability of employment and the urban/rural income differential.;The empirical analysis was conducted in two complementary, but separate, parts. Initially, aggregate linear models for the combined male and female net in-migration rate, female net in-migration rate, and male net in-migration rate were developed and estimated using the OLS method. The results suggest that earnings, labor force participation rate, and urbanization rate had a statistically significant pull effect while the index of rural poverty, the cost of creating a work place in the urban informal sector, fertility rate, and education had a statistically significant push effect on the interstate male and female migration decision, both as a group and individually.;Secondly, a simultaneous equation model of interstate migration was formulated and estimated in order to account for the interdependence of the migration variable and the explanatory variables. By and large, the 2SLS technique improves the absolute values of the estimates of the explanatory variables in the MNIMR, EARN, TLFPR, FLFPR, and FERT equations. However, these estimates tend to deteriorate in the FNIMR equation, possibly due to the sensitivity of the exogenous variables in the system. The direction of change of the variables in the simultaneous equation model were in accord with the theoretical expectation. In terms of policy implications, the findings strongly suggest that the high rate of urban unemployment and underemployment resulting from interstate labor mobility in Mexico and other nations with similar economic and institution structure, may be slowed through the coordination urban job creation and rural development programs.;The two distinguishing features of this study are that: (1) it incorporates the demographic and other institutional variables into an interstate migration model in addition to the conventional economic variables, and (2) it also considers the effects of the aforementioned economic and noneconomic explanatory variables on both the male and female migration behavior separately. The data for this investigation were largely drawn from the 1970 Mexican Censuses of Population and Services. |
