Volume 5, Number 1 (Winter) 1970
Crowley, Ronald W. 1970. "An Empirical Investigation of Some Local Public Costs of In-Migration to Cities." Journal of Human Resources 5(1):11-23.
The net burden of in-migrants on the population of a city is calculated in this article by multiplying the income distribution of in-migrants by an income-based per capita distribution of revenues and expenditures. A measure of the burden which compensates for different revenue-expenditure patterns among cities is developed. These statistics are used for examining the costs imposed by in-migration on 94 large U.S. cities. The assumptions and implications of the methodology are examined in detail.
Among the cities studied, 1955-60 in-migrants imposed in 1960 a median net burden per city of $2,500,000; the median net burden per migrant was $72 and that per city resident, $8. Considerable regional dispersion in the size of the relative burden was noted.
The conclusion of the study is that significant costs on in-migration do exist. Some of these costs may be only temporary, but they are positive and represent a subsidization of migrants by nonmigrant residents of a city for a period of time immediately following migration.
The author is Assistant Professor of Economics, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. The article is based in part on the author's Ph.D. dissertation, "The Nature and Social Cost of In-Migration to Cities in the United States, 1955-1960," submitted to Duke University in January 1968. He wishes to express his appreciation to David G. Davies, supervisor of the thesis; to Selma J. Mushkin, former director of the Council of State Governments State-Local Finances, 1970, Project, the agency which awarded him a fellowship for his project; and to the referees for this Journal and his colleagues, Hiroki Tsurumi and Walter Hettich, who offered valuable suggestions.
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