A migration model for internal movements within a country applied to Portuguese data

José Martins, Universidade de Aveiro
Carlos Silva, Universidade de Aveiro
Maria Cristina S. Gomes, Universidade de Aveiro
Eduardo Anselmo Castro, Universidade de Aveiro

There are a significant number of NUTS III regions of Portugal (about half) undergoing a human desertification process. In order to provide support to policy makers, the Demospin project is developing a joint demographic-economic model to describe the trends and allow for the evaluation of policy impacts. The estimation of the number of migrants in these regions proved to be one of the main difficulties to be surmounted. From the census information of 1991 and 2001, a specific model was developed to estimate migration based on socioeconomic factors: the creation or destruction of employment, the relative GDP per capita between the region and the national level and the relative demographic potential of the region compared to the regions average. A highly significant dependence of migration on the creation or destruction of employment is observed for the age groups between 20 and 40 year olds. Gender is not relevant in this analysis of patterns of employment dependence, even if for some regions the migration by gender is clearly different. The GDP per capita difference between the region and the nation has a significant impact on the 20 to 29 year olds. A lower-than-average GDP per capita is significantly related to an outgoing migration of youngsters. For older age groups, the relation with the economic dynamics is weaker. The proposed model is statistically significant in explaining the migration of younger age groups - up to 40 years old - mainly dependent on the creation or destruction of jobs. However, in spite of the weaker relation with the economic dynamics of older age groups, reasonable agreement is obtained between modelled results and observations.