The Pursuance of Better Quality of life: In the Long Run, Better Quality of Social Life Is the Most Important Factor in Migration

A model is developed to explore the relationships between interregional migration and regional variations of quality of life. The model incorporates the impact of the interregional variations of the various aspects of quality of life including economic, political, environmental, social, health and education. The long‐run and short‐run migration data for 65 major U.S. standard metropolitan statistical areas are used to test the model. The results suggest that unlike the conventional conclusions, economic factors are not so important in motivating interregional migration. Rather, it is shown that in the long‐run the pursuance of better quality ot social life turns out to be the most important factor. In the short‐run, the results suggest that the pursuance of better environmental quality is the dominant factor in explaining the interregional migration.