| Migration is usually analyzed as a decision made by individuals. With the growth of women's employment and wages, however, migration has become a joint decision for many families.;The first part of this thesis develops a search theoretic framework for examining joint migration decisions of two spouses in the labor force. It goes beyond earlier models of family migration by incorporating an extended time horizon, differences in the probability of finding suitable employment in various regions, and a more general probability distribution of wages. The model implies that couples are more likely to reside in labor markets with more frequent job offers than single people. The model also shows that the overall effect of joint family decisions can either increase or decrease mobility, which is one of several new results in the theoretical literature on migration. Another new result is that a couple may not emigrate from a region they would both leave if single. This is not dependent on their opportunities being negatively correlated across regions (i.e. one spouse is better off in New York and the other in California, but Wisconsin is second best for both so they stay). Rather, this result is a function of the sequential nature of the migration decision set up in the model. Also, the model allows couples to migrate more than once.;The second part of the thesis is empirical and attempts to measure the impact of women's work on migration. The estimation procedure used (i.e. event history analysis with competing risks), is new to the study of family migration and motivated by the theoretical model. By taking spells lengths as the unit of observation rather than individuals, the procedure allows the explanatory variables to correspond more closely to each migration decision. Furthermore, estimation of joint hazards did not constrict marriage and marital breakups to be treated as exogenous to the migration decision. The theoretical model lead to the inclusion of a variable representing the wife's wage relative to her husband's wage. This variable provides new insights into how the increase in women's wages affects the mobility of married couples.;The main empirical conclusions of the thesis are: (1) the rise of women's employment and earnings has a dampening effect on mobility, but (2) among migrating couples, consideration of the husband's career dominates even though the wife's career has some influence, and (3) men are more likely than their wives to be "tied" to a particular region and women are more likely than their husbands to be "forced to leave" a particular region. |
