Internal migration of young adults and social mobility

Young adulthood is the period of life when rates of residential mobility are the highest. Understanding migration patterns and how they change in response to economic opportunities is crucial to capture the full consequences of labour demand shocks for young adults. This project proposes an innovative programme of research to study the residential mobility of young adults in England, how it is affected by economic opportunities and how it affects social mobility and spatial inequality. The research will use the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) administrative records.  

Objective 1) The first aim is to produce a descriptive study of the migration flows of young adults across local labour markets by using information available in LEO data about their location in the last year of secondary school and then again in early adulthood. The first output will be the design and delivery of a comprehensive website that uses interactive maps to describe migration flows across local labour markets in England by socio-economic status and by higher education status and how these flows changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Objective 2) The second aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive study of the out-migration and in-migration decisions of young adults in England. Migration between local labour markets by young adults may help equalise economic disparities across areas, particularly if it responds to economic opportunities. Alternatively, this migration could enhance the disparities if it results in geographical polarization of skills, hindering the chances of future growth for “left-behind” areas. The empirical analysis of LEO data in this study will evaluate whether young adults respond to economic opportunities in their decision to out-migrate the local labour market where they are at the end of secondary school and in the choice of their destination. Additionally, it will investigate whether the decision to out-migrate and the choice of the destinations, as responses to economic opportunities, are heterogeneous by ability, by higher education status and across socio-demographic groups. 

Objective 3) The third aim of this research is to investigate to what extent internal migration in early adulthood is associated to social mobility at individual and regional level. If young adults who relocate to different local labour markets (at the beginning of their career) experience an increase in earnings compared to similar peers who do not relocate, migration may be a key investment to help poorer young adults to move forward and break the transmission of social status from parents to children. If however mostly young adults from more affluent backgrounds can afford to move, residential mobility can exacerbate differences in earnings between young adults from the least and most disadvantaged families explaining some of the spatial differences in social mobility that are not accounted for by education. 

This is an important and ambitious project that will maximise the impact and value of the LEO dataset by delivering important findings for academics, policy makers and other parties that are active in the public policy debate. The project will also fill a gap in the literature on labour market outcomes of young adults in England. Finally it will inform the debate on person- versus place-based policies to tackle local downturns in economic opportunities, and on policies that promote residential mobility showing how such interventions can support and favour social mobility among different groups of young adults.