An Analysis of the Flow of Domestic Migrants into and out of the 50 Largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas Using Administrative Records

Amy Apodaca, University of Texas at San Antonio and U.S. Census Bureau

A recent study (Farley and Frey, 1996) finds that the nation’s largest metropolitan areas gained the greatest number of migrants from abroad in the late 1990s, but lost the most domestic migrants. Also, residents leaving the nation’s immigrant magnet metropolitan areas were more racially and ethnically diverse than in previous decades. This paper presents an analysis of Metropolitan Statistical Areas’ migration between 2003 and 2004 using individual tax returns to research the domestic migration patterns of the fifty largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas focusing on the demographic characteristics of individuals into and out of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas.