Techniques for Analysis of Migration-History Data from the ESCAP National Migration Surveys

摘要

This paper discusses methods for analyzing migration using life-history or longitudinal data. It is a revised version of a paper prepared for a technical working group meeting on migration and urbanization organized by the Population Division of ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific). The meeting was held at ESCAP in Bangkok, December 1-5, 1981. The Population Division of ESCAP, in collaboration with member countries, has developed a set of survey manuals for national migration surveys to be conducted in the ESCAP region in the early 1980s. A key component of the ESCAP survey instrument is a life-history questionnaire that elicits a retrospective accounting of migration and related life events. Although this paper focuses on the ESCAP life-history questionnaire, the issues and methods discussed herein are applicable to other life-history data (for example, the female and male retrospective life histories in Rand's Malaysian Family Life Survey and the Rand-INCAP Guatemalan Survey or to such longitudinal datasets as the University of Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics (the core dataset being analyzed by Rand's Population Research Center).