Business Cycles, Migration and Health

Abstract

This paper uses data from the PSID to investigate how selective migration affects the relationship between business cycles and health. We show that, among the healthy, migration is used to insure against macroeconomic fluctuations. However, among the unhealthy, there is no relationship between migration and business cycles. In other words, illness erases a person’s ability to use migration to hedge against business cycle fluctuations. This suggests that recessions should induce an out-migration of disproportionately healthy people from economically depressed areas. This implies that - ceterus paribus - mortality and morbidity rates should be counter-cyclical.