The effect of polytechnic reform on migration

Böckerman, Petri and Haapanen, Mika (2011): The effect of polytechnic reform on migration.

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of polytechnic reform on geographical mobility. A polytechnic, higher education reform took place in Finland in the 1990s. It gradually transformed former vocational colleges into polytechnics and also brought higher education to regions that did not have a university before. This expansion of higher education provides exogenous variation in the regional supply of higher education. We find that the reform increased the migration of high school graduates. The migration propensities increased particularly close to graduation from high school, but some results also suggest a smaller positive effect over a longer period.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Migration; higher education; school reform; polytechnics; high school graduates
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I20 - General; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J10 - General; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers > J61 - Geographic Labor Mobility ; Immigrant Workers; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R2 - Household Analysis > R23 - Regional Migration ; Regional Labor Markets ; Population ; Neighborhood Characteristics

References

Armstrong, H.W., Taylor, J., 2000. Regional Economics and Policy, 3rd edition. Blackwell, Oxford.

Beine, M., Docquier, F., Rapoport, H., 2008. Brain drain and human capital formation in developing countries: winners and losers. The Economic Journal 118, 631–652.

Black, S., Devereux, P., Salvanes, K.G., 2005. Why the apple doesn’t fall far: Understanding intergenerational transmission of human capital. The American Economic Review 95, 437–449.

Bodenhöfer, H.-J., 1967. The mobility of labor and the theory of human capital. The Journal of Human Resources 2, 431–448.

Böckerman, P., Hämäläinen, U., Uusitalo, R., 2009. Labour market effects of the polytechnic education reform: the Finnish experience. Economics of Education Review 28, 672–681.

Cameron, A.C., Trivedi, P.K., 2005. Microeconometrics: Methods and Applications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

DaVanzo, J., 1983. Repeat migration in the United States: who moves back and who moves on? Review of Economics and Statistics 65, 552–559.

Faggian, A., McCann, P., Sheppard, S., 2007. Human capital, higher education and graduate migration: an analysis of Scottish and Welsh students. Urban Studies 44, 2511–2528.

Falaris, E.M., 1988. Migration and wages of young men. Journal of Human Resources 23, 514–534.

Gottlieb, P.D., Joseph, G., 2006. College-to-work migration of technology graduates and holders of doctorates within the United States. Journal of Regional Science 46, 627–659.

Greenwood, M.J., 1975. Research on internal migration in the United States: a survey. Journal of Economic Literature 13, 397–433.

Greenwood, M.J., 1997. Internal migration in developed countries. In: Rosenzweig, M.R., Stark, O. (Eds.), Handbook of Population and Family Economics, Volume 1. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 647-720.

Haapanen, M., Ritsilä, J., 2007. Can migration decisions be affected by income policy interventions? Evidence from Finland. Regional Studies 41, 339–348.

Haapanen, M., Tervo, H., 2012. Migration of the highly educated: Evidence from residence spells of university graduates. Journal of Regional Science, Forthcoming.

Hickman, D.C., 2009. The effects of higher education policy on the location decision of individuals: evidence from Florida’s Bright Futures Scholarship Program. Regional Science and Urban Economics 39, 553–562.

Hämäläinen, K., Böckerman, P., 2004. Regional labor market dynamics, housing, and migration. Journal of Regional Science 44, 543–568.

Hämäläinen, U., Uusitalo, R., 2008. Signalling or human capital: evidence from the Finnish polytechnic school reform. Scandinavian Journal of Economics 110, 755–775.

Jaeger, D.A., Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., Sunde, U., Bonin, H., 2010. Direct evidence on risk attitudes and migration. Review of Economics and Statistics 92, 684–689.

Jauhiainen, S., 2008. Regional concentration of highly educated couples. In: Poot, J., van Wissen, L., Waldorf, B. (Eds.), Migration and Human Capital. : Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 97-110.

Kangasharju, A., Pekkala, S., 2004. Increasing regional disparities in the 1990s: the Finnish experience. Regional Studies 38, 255–267.

Lampinen, O., 2004. The use of experimentation in educational reform: the case of the Finnish polytechnic experiment 1992–1999. Tertiary Education and Management 7, 311–321.

Levy, M.B., Wadycki, W.J., 1974. Education and the decision to migrate: an econometric analysis of migration in Venezuela. Econometrica 42, 377–388.

Machin, S., Pelkonen, P., Salvanes, K.G., 2011. Education and mobility. Journal of the European Economic Association, Forthcoming.

Malamud, O., Wozniak, A.K., 2010. The impact of college education on geographic mobility: identifying education using multiple components of Vietnam draft risk. NBER Working Paper No. 16463.

Milne, W.J., 1993. Macroeconomic influences on migration. Regional Studies 27, 365–373.

Ministry of Education, 2005. OECD thematic review of tertiary education: country background report for Finland. Publications of the Ministry of Education, Finland, 2005:38.

Ministry of Education, 2009. KOTA online database service. Statistical data on universities and fields of education from 1981.

Munasinghe, L., Sigman, K., 2004. A hobo syndrome? Mobility, wages, and job turnover. Labour Economics 11, 191–218.

Nakosteen, R.A., Westerlund, O., Zimmer, M., 2008. Migration and self-selection: measured earnings and latent characteristics. Journal of Regional Science 48, 769–788.

Nivalainen, S., 2004. Determinants of family migration: short moves vs. long moves. Journal of Population Economics 17, 157–175.

Oakes, J. M., 2004. The (mis)estimation of neighbourhood effects: causal inference for a practicable social epidemiology. Social Science & Medicine 58, 1929–1952.

Pekkala, S., Tervo, H., 2002. Unemployment and migration: does moving help? Scandinavian Journal of Economics 104, 621–639.

Ritsilä, J., Ovaskainen, M., 2001. Migration and regional centralization of human capital. Applied Economics 33, 317–325.

Saks, R.E., Wozniak, A., 2011. Labor reallocation over the business cycle: new evidence from internal migration. Journal of Labor Economics 29, 697-739.

Schwartz, A., 1973. Interpreting the effect of distance on migration. Journal of Political Economy 81, 1153–1569.

Sjaastad, L.A., 1962. The costs and returns of human migration. Journal of Political Economy 70, 80–93.

Statistics Finland, 2001. Population Census 2000 Handbook. Helsinki.

Tervo, H., 2005. Regional policy lessons from Finland. In: Felsenstein, D., Portnov, B.A. (Eds.), Regional Disparities in Small Countries. Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 267-282.

Tunali, I., 2000. Rationality of migration. International Economic Review 41, 893–920.

Yousefi, M., Rives, J., 1987. Migration behavior of college graduates: an empirical analysis. Journal of Behavioral Economics 16, 35–49.

Venhorst, V., van Dijk, J., van Wissen, L., 2011. An analysis of trends in spatial mobility of Dutch graduates. Spatial Economic Analysis, 6, 57–82.