Migrations Among Educationally Homogamous Couples in The US: 1997-2013

Abstract: As female labor participation rates, educational attainment, and occupational prestige improve the colocational dilemma of migration increasingly a problem. This paper seeks to determinine the difference in determinents and outcomes of interstate migration across educationally homogamous couples in the United States. The paper uses data from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics for couples, married and cohabitating, age 24-55 in the period 1997-2013. This paper looks at three couple types, low educated couples being those where both members have no college degree, high power couples where both members have a college degree and unequal couples where one of the couple members has a college degree. The paper finds that with respect to high power couples there is little evidence that gender equitable household bargaining is taking place and that migration decision are predominately determined by the husbands. In addition wives in these couples do not gain from migration by any reasonable difference from their low power or unequal power counterparts. It was the assumption of this paper that the new dynamics of gender equity in the workforce would lead to new patterns of family migration. However, it is apparent that family migration still follows gender specialization patterns that are evident in research from earlier periods. While dual power couples are defined as couples with two college graduates, further research should narrow this definition in order to better examine the issue of family migration in the changing landscape of female employment.