1 From L.A. to Boise: How Migration has Changed During the Covid-19 Pandemic Article Review Paridhi Agrawala Department of Marketing Research, Rutgers University 33:630:385:B7: Marketing Research Professor Francisisco J. Quevedo July 3, 2022 2 From L.A. to Boise: How Migration has Changed During the Covid-19 Pandemic Article Review In the article, From L.A. to Boise: How Migration has Changed During the Covid-19 Pandemic, it talks about how the authors Peter Haslag and Daniel Weagley examine the changes covid 19 has brought to work arrangement as well as lifestyle and how they have affected the location decisions of many households (Haslag & Weagley, 2022). As said in the article, “ We use proprietary data on over 360,000 residential, interstate moves over the last five years with accompanying survey data.” (Haslag & Weagley, 2022). From April 2020 to December 2021, they found that there were about more than 12% moves because of Covid-19 being around. These moves were more towards smaller cities, lower cost of living locations, lower tax locales, and locations with fewer pandemic-related restrictions (Haslag & Weagley, 2022). Also they found out that as it is said in the article, “higher income households are moving out of more populous cities at greater rates, and they are moving more for lifestyle reasons and less for work-related reasons, consistent with increased location flexibility due to shifts to remote work arrangements”, (Haslag & Weagley, 2022). On the other hand, lower income households' reasons for moving are the same as they were before. Around 15% of the people that have moved during the pandemic are saying that their reason for moving is because they are able to work remotely. Throughout their studies they have come up with the results that show many outcomes of interest to the people, which include the future structure of cities, the persistence of remote work arrangements, municipal financing, and real estate (Haslag & Weagley, 2022). There are also a few ways they support their arguments and analyses like discussed in the previous paragraph. Firstly, they used data from a survey they gave out to support their analysis. 3 They did this by giving out surveys to people who were on the move on the interstate. Their analysis represents about 98.6% of moves which were performed by their survey (Haslag & Weagley, 2022). Going more into statistics, they also did a time-series analysis on their sample that they had for these moves. This analysis concluded that many people that moved were because there was an option for remote work, the way financing was a big part and also real estate (Haslag & Weagley, 2022). In addition to that, they also do a CPS survey. In this survey they calculate what the changes have occurred across income, household size, and age bracket. To conclude they found that higher income households, and families of 3 or more people are moving less for job reasons and more for lifestyle reasons (Haslag & Weagley, 2022). In my opinion, I agree with this author with their analysis and also with their results and observations they made through their surveys. It is also valid to say that different sample groups will have different reasons for moving and also multiple different benefits from moving, not just one. In the article the results said that higher income households, and families of 3 or more people are moving less for job reasons and more for lifestyle reasons (Haslag & Weagley, 2022). In other words jobs were a reason but the bigger reason was for lifestyle. In my opinion this is true because with covid being around and keeping us stuck at home people did need a lifestyle change. Looking at a counterargument, it is said that higher-income households are drawn to larger, more expensive cities because of the agglomeration benefits of idea sharing, which leads to higher individual productivity (Davis and Dingel 2019). In other words, what they are trying to say is that high income households are only looking for expensive cities because of the ideas of sharing which is false as explained in the article. Like it was explained in our article, there were many different factors that go into moving and it is not necessary for higher income households to 4 move to expensive cities only because with covid there were also a lot of financial changes. This is a counter argument because although it makes sense for before covid, it is not really looking at how covid has changed the whole economy to now look into saving as it is not as easy to find jobs and many businesses have shut down because of covid which change their moving decisons. 5 References Haslag, P. H., & Weagley, D. (2022, March 18). From L.A. to Boise: How Migration Has Changed During the COVID-19 Pandemic. SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=3808326 Davis, D. R., & Dingel, J. I. (2019). A spatial knowledge economy. American Economic Review, 109(1), 153–170. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20130249
