Geographic Mobility over the Life-Cycle

Arbeitspapier

When mobility between locations is frictional, a person's economic well-being is partially determined by her place of birth. Using a life cycle model of mobility, we find that search frictions are the main impairment to the mobility of young people in Spain, and these frictions are particularly strong in economically distressed locations. As a result, being born in a high-unemployment urban area carries with it a large welfare penalty. Less stable jobs, slower skill accumulation, lower average wages, and fewer possibilities for geographic mobility all contribute to these welfare losses. Paying transfers to people in distressed economic locations decreases these welfare losses without large adverse effects on mobility. In contrast, several policies that encourage people to move to low-unemployment urban areas increase these welfare losses and fail to meaningfully increase mobility towards these more successful locations.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 15896

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy: General (includes Measurement and Data) ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity ; Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook: General ; Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers ; Labor Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs ; Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search ; Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies: Public Policy ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics ; Housing Supply and Markets
• Subject: mobility ; local labor markets ; search frictions ; life cycle ; dynamic spatial models

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Diaz, Antonia ; Jáñez, Álvaro ; Wellschmied, Felix
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/272523
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET