Voting with your feet in the United Kingdom: Using cross-migration rates to estimate relative living standards

This article reexamines and extends the literature on the use of migration rates to estimate compensating differentials as measures of regional quality of life. I estimate an interregional migration regression for the UK and use the results to measure regional quality of life and standard of living. The results suggest a North-South divide within England, and that Scotland and Wales have relatively high levels of both. The results also lead to a rejection of regional standard-of-living e quivalence (long-run regional equilibrium) in the UK. Received: August 1998 / Accepted: January 2000