Six things the ONS Longitudinal study has taught us about internal migration

Since 1971, the ONS Longitudinal Study has shed light on a huge range of social issues: this series of Linking our Lives blogs looks back on the major contributions which have been made to different fields of research using this unique data resource. This blog is the first in the series, and highlights some of the key ways in which this one per cent sample of the population of England and Wales, which contains census and life event data on more than a million people, has contributed to the study of internal migration. The series aims to highlight the breadth of further research which will become possible when the 2021 Census link to the study is finalised in 2025.

1.  ‘The escalator effect’

Professor Tony Fielding, now Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex, was the first researcher to see the potential of the LS for the study of migration. Fielding’s work on ‘escalator regions’, published in 1992, used data on individuals who moved home between 1971 and 1981. It focused on those who moved into or out of the South East of England, asking how these moves linked to people’s chance of achieving upward social mobility.

Fielding found that such ‘escalator regions’ attracted young people at the start of their working lives and provided a space where their upward mobility could be accelerated. Later in life a significant proportion ‘stepped off’ the escalator and left the South East, cashing in the social and economic capital they had gained, typically moving into either retirement or self-employment. The role of the South East as an escalator region continued into the 1980s, he found in a later study.

Further work with Susan Halford revealed that while both men and women benefitted from ‘stepping on the escalator,’ the relative benefits gained by women were greater.

2. Stepping off the ‘escalator’

The implications of these findings were explored further in a 2012 paper by Professor Tony Champion, which looked further into the circumstances of those who moved to the South East between 1966 and 1971 but who left again before 1981. Champion looked at the extent to which this ‘escalator’ effect had a negative impact on other regions, but found the picture was more positive than had previously been thought.

One in three of the young people who moved to the South East between 1966 and 1971 had left again by 1981, he found, with most of the outward migration among working-age people being among the under-30s.

This work led to a reappraisal of the perceived negative effects of the economic dominance of the South East: as returners were younger and more economically active than had previously been thought, they appeared to have been contributing just as much to their regional economies as non-returners did in the South East. So the downside for the regions of origin was not as great as implied by the escalator region model, which had emphasised the role of those returning much later in life to ‘downshift’ or to retire.

3. Migrating into a non-escalator region

This work on ‘escalator regions’ was not Tony Champion’s first encounter with the ONS LS. His research with Malcolm Williams in the 1990s had looked at whether the movement of people into Cornwall from other regions had helped to revive a flagging economy.

Champion and Williams compared the economic performance of migrants to Cornwall with that of migrants to Wiltshire, where the economy more closely resembles that of the South East, between 1981 and 1991. They found that while the two groups of internal migrants had similar employment rates and levels of education before they moved, those moving to Wiltshire fared better in the ensuing decade.

Migrants to Wiltshire had increased their employment levels by 1991, with men seven percentage points more likely to be in full-time work and women were three percentage points more likely to be in either full or part-time work. Among those moving to Cornwall, male employment rates fell by more than 17 percentage points, and female by more than five points.

The study found those moving to Cornwall were more likely to be moving into self-employed roles such as running hospitality businesses, and that their arrival did not, contrary to the hopes of planners, ‘kick-start’ the Cornish economy. 

4. Is internal migration falling in England and Wales?

Moving on to the 2011 Census data, Tony Champion and Professor Ian Shuttleworth of Queen’s University Belfast worked together to shed a UK perspective on emerging US research which suggested rates of internal migration were declining. Their research, published in 2016 used early ‘beta test’ data from the LS to look at changes in migration between the 1971-81 decade and the 2001-11 decade.

They found that, as in the USA, there had been a marked reduction in shorter moves of less than 10km, and that this involved almost all types of people. But in contrast to the US experience, there was a much smaller decline in the numbers of people who had moved longer distances.

The study was not able fully to explain the reduction in short-distance migration: was it prompted by a change in people’s desire to move, or by structural factors which might limit their ability to do so? While the census could not answer this question, they said – it does not examine motives of those who fill in the form – other studies suggested those wanting to move were not experiencing significant difficulty.

From Champion and Shuttleworth, 2016

5. Migration and health effects

In the early 21^st Century Dr Paul Norman, then at the University of Manchester, worked with colleagues at St Andrews and Leeds to examine the links between migration, area-based deprivation and health. Using ONS LS data for 1971-1991, they found that, among the young, migrants were generally healthier than non-migrants. Migrants who moved from more to less deprived places were healthier than migrants who moved from less to more deprived places, they reported.

Looking at those who moved or stayed put within different areas, they found that in the more affluent areas, those who moved home were healthier than those who did not.  But those who moved within deprived areas were less healthy than those who did not.

Over the 20-year period, the largest effect they found was that relatively healthy migrants were moving from more deprived areas towards less deprived ones. This was raising levels of ill-health and mortality in the areas people were leaving; leading to increases in health inequalities between the least and most deprived areas. Migration, rather than changes in the deprivation of the areas non-migrants lived in, accounted for most of that increase, they found.

6. Left-behind places

Work using the 2011 Census data turned to a policy issue which had led to much discussion during the ensuing decade: concern about ‘left-behind places,’ which had existed since World War II, had taken on a new urgency post-Brexit: was the rise of populism and the 2016 vote to take the UK out of the European Union caused by ‘the revenge of the left-behind places?’

Working with UCL’s Professor Oliver Duke-Williams, Tony Champion looked at the allocation of funds under the £1.6 billion Stronger Towns Fund (STF), launched in 2019. Using the ONS LS data available for up to 2011, they set out to identify the specific places which the STF was most likely to target and examine their demographic dynamics in terms of their migration exchanges with the rest of the country.

They created a ranking of places on the basis of gender, age, ethnicity and housing tenure.  Focusing on people who moved from weaker to stronger towns between 2001 and 2011, they found that weaker areas had low levels both of inward and outward migration compared with stronger ones but were also more likely to see outward migration among 16-25s. Those who moved from weaker to stronger places were more likely to move from rented to owner-occupied accommodation than those who stayed.

The next step in this research, they said, would be to return to the ‘escalator region’ approach initiated by Tony Fielding with the addition of the 2021 Census data, but to concentrate now on the weakest places to see how well their leavers fared compared to their stayers.

With thanks to Professor Tony Champion, Emeritus Professor of Population Geography at Newcastle University, and Professor Ian Shuttleworth of Queen’s University Belfast, who have both worked with LS data for many years and who contributed material for this blog. Professors Champion and Shuttleworth are interviewed in the accompanying Linking our Lives podcast, which can be accessed here:

 References:

Champion, A. and Duke-Williams, O. (2019). Migration and the ‘left-behind’ places. Unpublished paper presented at a one-day meeting on ‘Stronger Towns: What can the census tell us?’ held at the Institute of Health Informatics, London, 19 July 2019.

Champion, T. (2012). Testing the return migration element of the ‘escalator region’ model: an analysis of migration into and out of south-east England, 1966-2001. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 5(2), pp.255–270. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsr045.

Champion, T. and Shuttleworth, I. (2016). Are People Changing Address Less? An Analysis of Migration within England and Wales, 1971-2011, by Distance of Move. Population, Space and Place, 23(3), p.e2026. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2026.

Fielding, A. and Halford, S. (1993). Geographies of Opportunity: A Regional Analysis of Gender-Specific Social and Spatial Mobilities in England and Wales, 1971–81. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 25(10), pp.1421–1440. doi:https://doi.org/10.1068/a251421.

Fielding, A.J. (1992). Migration and Social Mobility: South East England as an Escalator Region. Regional Studies, 26(1), pp.1–15. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/00343409212331346741.

Norman, P., Boyle, P. and Rees, P. (2005). Selective migration, health and deprivation: a longitudinal analysis. Social Science & Medicine, 60(12), pp.2755–2771. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.11.008.

Williams, M. and Champion, A. (1998). Cornwall, poverty and in-migration . In: Cornish Studies 6. University of Exeter Press, pp.118–127.