Reconciling and translating migration data collected over time intervals of differing widths

In this paper we describe and contrast the age and spatial structures of migration identified by data collected over one-year and five-year time intervals, by focusing, in particular, on the generation and distribution components of age- and origin-destination-specific migration flows. We explore the contributions of primary, return, and onward migration defined by fixed interval migration data, and we outline a crude translation procedure for transforming the one-year migration flow data into an estimated five-year counterpart. The data used in this study represent several migration periods drawn from recent U.S. and Canadian censuses and surveys. Differences between the structures exhibited by U.S. and Canadian migration patterns, collected over one-year and five-year migration time intervals, are carefully examined and contrasted. Versions of this paper were presented in February, 2002 at the annual meetings of the Western Regional Science Association in Monterey, California and in May, 2002 at the annual meetings of the Population Association of America in Atlanta, Georgia. The authors would like to thank Professor Frans Willekens at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for his collaboration on earlier work that focused on migration spatial structure, of which this paper is a continuation. Also, our appreciation goes to the three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. This research is being supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS-9986203).