What Can the Age Composition of the Population Tell Us about the Age Composition of Migrants?

Jani S. Little, University of Colorado at Boulder
Andrei Rogers, University of Colorado at Boulder

Preliminary findings show that the age structure of a population can be useful in estimating the age composition of outmigrants. Demographers have always known that population pyramids reflect the fertility, mortality and migration processes of a region. This research, on the other hand, uses the age composition of a population to forecast the profile of outmigration. This work is motivated in part by changes in U.S. Census survey strategies that present new challenges for measuring migration. Initial investigation (presented in the attached paper) was based on state populations in 1995 and the schedules of age-specific outmigration between 1995 and 2000. Ongoing work extends these analyses using the population structure to categorize the shape of the outmigration profile (monotonically decreasing through the later years, peaking in the retirement years, or increasing for the oldest ages). Other extensions examine the generalizability of the state findings for smaller geographic units (MSAs and counties).