TY  - JOUR
AU  - Boustan,Leah Platt
AU  - Fishback,Price V.
AU  - Kantor,Shawn E.
TI  - The Effect of Internal Migration on Local Labor Markets: American Cities During the Great Depression
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13276
PY  - 2007
Y2  - July 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13276
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13276.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Leah Platt Boustan
Department of Economics
8283 Bunche Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477
Tel: 310/794-4263
Fax: 310/825-9528
E-Mail: lboustan@econ.ucla.edu

Price V. Fishback
Department of Economics
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ  85721
Tel: 520/621-4421
Fax: 520/621-8450
E-Mail: pfishback@eller.arizona.edu

Shawn E. Kantor
Department of Economics
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Sage Laboratory, 3404
110 Eighth Street
Troy, NY 12180
Tel: 518-276-3925
E-Mail: kantos@rpi.edu
AB  - During the Great Depression, as today, migrants were accused of taking jobs and crowding relief rolls. At the time, protest concerned internal migrants rather than the foreign born. We investigate the effect of net migration on local labor markets, instrumenting for migrant flows to a destination with extreme weather events and variation in New Deal programs in typical sending areas. Migration had little effect on the hourly earnings of existing residents. Instead, migration prompted some residents to move away and others to lose weeks of work and/or access to relief jobs. Given the period's high unemployment, these lost work opportunities were costly to existing residents.
ER  -