Volume 4, Number 4 (Fall) 1969
Sanders, John. 1969. "The Depressed Area and Labor Mobility: The Eastern Kentucky Case." Journal of Human Resources 4(4):437-450.
Analyzing cross sectional return migration data for a specific depressed rural area is one method of evaluating the efficiency of the migration process. The employment experience of those who did not remain in the industrial area may give information about the least successful migrants. The primary hypothesis for return migration was the ability of the migrant to obtain only marginal employment in the industrial area. The data of this study appear to support this hypothesis. Measures to improve the assimilation process into industrial society of this group of return migrants would also be expected to facilitate the migration process for the pool of future entrants into the industrial society from rural depressed areas.
The author is a Graduate Assistant, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Minnesota. Journal Paper 68-1-55, Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, 1968. The article is take primarily from the author's Master's thesis, "Some Aspects of the Economics of Return Migration: With Reference to the Eastern Kentucky Coal Fields." Financial support was provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Kentucky. I am indebted to Dr. Kurt Anschel, Dr. Eldon Smith, and Dr. Robert Rudd for their encouragement and criticism. I am especially grateful to Dr. Anschel for extensive critical comments on the first draft of this article, and I am indebted to Dr. Keith Bryant, Dr. Lee Martin, and the reviewers for this Journal for their critical comments on several later drafts. I alone am responsible for errors of interpretation or judgment.
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