Why do fewer agricultural workers migrate now!

fan, maoyong; gabbard, susan; pena, anita alves and perloff.m, jeffrey;

The share of agricultural workers who migrate within the United States has fallen by approximatelyn 60% since the late 1990s. To explain this decline in the migration rate, we estimate annual migration-choice models using data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey for 1989�2009. On average, over the last decade of the sample, one-third of the fall in the migration rate was due to changes in the demographic composition of the workforce, while two-thirds was due to changes in coefficients (�structural� change). In some years, demographic changes were responsible for half of the overall change.