United States County-Specific Net Migration Rates Series

These data include county-level, net migration estimates by five-year age cohorts and sex, and by race and Hispanic origin, for the intercensal period from 2000 to 2010. The estimates were prepared using a vital statistics version of the forward cohort residual method. These estimates (and the net migration rates derivable from them) extend the set of decennial estimates of net migration that have been produced following each decennial census beginning with 1960 (net migration for the 1950s: Bowles and Tarver, 1965; 1960s: Bowles, Beale and Lee, 1975; 1970s: White, Mueser and Tierney, 1987; 1980s: Fuguitt, Beale, and Voss 2010; and 1990s: Voss, McNiven, Hammer, Johnson and Fuguitt, 2004).

Further information about this project is available on the Net Migration Patterns for US Counties Web site.

This data collection represents a set of United States county net migration estimates by age and sex for the 1980-1990 decade, and is part of a series of estimates done for each decade since 1950 (1950-1970: see NET MIGRATION OF THE POPULATION BY AGE, SEX, AND RACE, 1950-1970 [ICPSR 8493]; 1970-1980: see NET MIGRATION OF THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES BY AGE, RACE, AND SEX, 1970-1980 [ICPSR 8697]; 1990-2000: see COUNTY-SPECIFIC NET MIGRATION BY FIVE-YEAR AGE GROUPS, HISPANIC ORIGIN, RACE, AND SEX, 1990-2000 [ICPSR 4171]).

Net migration, the difference between the number of people moving into an area and the number moving out over a period, is measured here, and in all the other sets of estimates in the series, by the residual method. That is, net migration is equal to the population change over the period minus the natural increase (births -- deaths). Full details on how natural increase is estimated for each county, as well as other details of the data collection, are described in the codebook.