From Tied Movers to Tied Stayers: Changes in Family Migration Decision-Making, 1989-98 to 2009-18

Abstract

Past research has found that when a dual-career heterosexual married couple migrates to a new labor market, the woman is more likely to be the “tied mover”: the partner whose career suffers as a result of the move. This study investigates possible changes in gendered decision-making related to internal migration among married couples in the United States between the 1990s and the 2010s. Using data from the 1989-98 and 2009-18 Annual Social and Economic Supplements of the Current Population Survey, we examine whether income equality between spouses has become a bigger barrier to migration among married individuals, and we investigate year-to-year changes in income among married migrants compared with their unmarried counterparts. Our findings show a general U-shaped association between wives' share of a married couple's income and that couple's likelihood of moving across state or county lines; in both time periods, couples are least likely to move when their incomes are roughly equal. Among young, well-educated married couples, though, we detect a notable change: Spousal income equality was not a barrier to moving in the 1990s, but it had become one by the 2010s. Among these same couples, however, we find some evidence that a gendered tied-mover effect still remains. If women in dual-career couples are less likely to be tied movers today than they once were, it may be because dual-career couples have become less likely to move for a job opportunity at all, even relative to the broader decline in internal migration across the population.