Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000

Metropolitan Magnets for International and Domestic Migrants

Hundreds of thousands of people move to the United States each year seeking a better life. Millions of Americans move to new locations within the United States each year for the same reason. The respective destinations of these two groups—immigrants and domestic migrants—shape the physical landscape, public service needs, business patterns, and political culture of our nation’s metropolitan areas. For those reasons international and domestic migration trends in the late 1990s, and how they shaped metropolitan growth dynamics, are some of the most eagerly anticipated findings from U.S. Census 2000. In recent decades immigrants and domestic migrants headed for different parts of the United States. Following the 1990 census studies showed that during the 1980s some large metropolitan areas had grown mostly as the result of immigration. A different set of metropolitan areas had grown primarily due to migration of individuals and families from other parts of the United States. In light of these divergent growth patterns it was posited that the demographic profiles for these “immigrant magnets” and “domestic migrant magnets” would, over time, become different.1 For example, the former metropolitan areas, with strong immigrant-driven growth and young, culturallydiversepopulations,mightfollowglobaleconomicanddemographic 13 Metropolitan Magnets for International and Domestic Migrants W I L L I A M H . F R E Y 1 The author is grateful to senior project programmer Cathy Sun and other support staff at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center, to John Haaga for comments, and to Alan Berube for review and editorial assistance. 1. Frey (1996); Frey and Liaw (1998). trends. The latter areas, by contrast, could become more “suburban-like” with less diverse, more middle-aged populations. With immigration rising to even higher levels in the 1990s, migration data from Census 2000 provide an opportunity to reassess these growth patterns.2 This chapter examines how immigration and domestic migration contributed to population change and residential composition in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas in the late 1990s. It first identifies the metropolitan areas that experienced the greatest influx of immigrants, and compares them to the metropolitan areas that exhibited the strongest growth—and largest declines—in domestic migrants from 1995 to 2000. Second, the study examines the racial/ethnic and educational characteristics of individuals who left the metropolitan areas that exported the most residents to other parts of the United States during that time. Third, it examines the contributions that domestic migrants made to the rapid growth in metropolitan areas in the “New Sunbelt” states in the South and West. Fourth, it distinguishes between growth sources within metropolitan areas, as immigrants drive population growth in core urban counties, and domestic migrants fuel growth in outlying counties. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the possible implications of these trends for the metropolitan United States in the coming decade. METHODOLOGY This study evaluates migration trends within the nation’s eighty-one largest metropolitan areas—those in which Census 2000 recorded populations of at least 500,000. Metropolitan Area Definitions The metropolitan types analyzed include Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSAs), Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), and New England County Metropolitan Areas (NECMAs) in the New England states, as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 1999 and in effect for Census 2000.3 These eighty-one areas represent 65 percent of the U.S. population, and include sixty MSAs, eighteen CMSAs, and three NECMAs. 14 William H. Frey 2. Martin and Midgley (2003). 3. This survey uses data from metropolitan areas defined by OMB as of June 30, 1999, and in effect for Census 2000. The OMB announced new metropolitan area definitions in June 2003. Schachter, Franklin, and Perry (2003). ThisstudydiffersfromotherBrookingscensusanalysesinitsuseofCMSAs rather than their component parts, Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas (PMSAs). CMSAs are metropolitan areas of 1 million or more people divided into two or more PMSAs. For example there are four PMSAs within the Los Angeles–Riverside–Orange County CMSA: the Los Angeles–Long Beach PMSA (consisting of Los Angeles County); the Orange County PMSA (Orange County); the Riverside–San Bernardino PMSA (Riverside and San Bernardino counties); and the Ventura PMSA (Ventura County). This study usesCMSAsratherthanPMSAstoreflecthowmigrationpatternsaffectbroad metropolitan regions, and to ensure that estimates of domestic migration capture geographically significant changes in residence, rather than moves between two jurisdictions within the same region. Migration Data The migration data analyzed in this study draw from...