Interregional migration and housing structure in an East European

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Interregional migration and housing structure in an East European transition country: A view of Lithuania 2001-2008

Gintautas Bloze1

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between interregional mobility at the municipal level and the local housing structure in a country where the housing sector is characterised by a rela-tively high private ownership rate, a small private rental sector, and persistent undersupply of new residential housing. Panel data for Lithuania – an East European transition country – for the years 2001-2008 are used to analyse internal migration inflows and outflows. Besides the usual migration determinants such as unemployment and wage differences, housing sector characteristics are also included in the empirical analysis. The results show that internal mi-gration flows are quite responsive to variations in housing market characteristics, especially to the supply of new dwellings, indicating that housing shortage is the key factor hampering interregional migration.

Keywords: Interregional migration, mobility, housing, LithuaniaJEL Classification: J11, R11, R23

1. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to study interregional mobility in an environment where the publicly-owned rental sector is very small and the private rental sector is small and unregu-lated. These are features of many Central and Eastern European (CEE) transition countries. Interregional mobility in CEE transition countries has been explored to some extent by re-searchers in empirical studies, for example in the case of Russia (Andrienko and Guriev 2003), the Baltic states, mainly Latvia and Estonia (Hazans 2003), Hungary (Cseres-Gergely 2005, Fidrmuc 2004), the Czech Republic (Fidrmuc 2004, Fidrmuc and Huber 2007), Ro-mania (Ghatak and Silaghi 2007), Poland (Fidrmuc 2004, Ghatak et al. 2008) and finally a cross-country study by the World Bank (2007). In these studies the main research interest was the relationship between internal migration and labour market conditions usually proxied by unemployment and wage rates, while some of these studies also took into account the effects of housing market conditions (Hegedus 2004, Cseres-Gergely 2005, Andrienko and Guriev 2003, Ghatak et al. 2008).This paper aims to consider more explicitly the impact of housing on interregional mobility. The empirical part of the study covers Lithuania.

1 Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Den-mark. E-mail [email protected]

Interregional migration and housing structures...

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Interregional migration is one of the mechanisms that can help to even out structural differences between regions, reflected in unequal wage and unemployment levels caused by idiosyncratic shocks to the economy. Figure 1 illustrates regional disparities in Lithuania in the period 1996 to 2007. The unemployment spread decreased from 1998 to 2001, which might have been a conse-quence of the Russian financial crisis of 1998. This probably affected some regions with low un-employment rates more heavily than regions with higher unemployment rates. Development of the earnings spread in the period 1996 to 2007 fluctuates less than the unemployment spread and does not show any obvious trend. Gross migration, including international migration, on the decrease from 1996 to 2001, then increased until 2004 and stabilised around two per cent. If we look at gross migration adjusted for international migration in the period 2001-2007, then the tendencies are the same as for gross migration. One interesting tendency, as could be expected, is that interregional migration had on average the same trend as the unemployment spread in the period 1998 to 2004, while no obvious relationship exists between fluctuation in internal migration and earnings spread.

A weak correlation between internal migration and labour market conditions is a common fea-ture of many CEE countries. For example, Fidrmuc (2004) investigated internal migration in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia in comparison with some older EU Member States and concluded that internal migration in transition economies is a fairly ineffective mechanism for adjusting interregional disparities. The reason for that could very well be specific characteristics of the housing markets in transition countries, characteristics that are absent in more developed countries. One such feature is the size of the rental sector relative to the owner-occupied sector and the level of construction of residential housing.

Figure 1. Gross migration rate and regional disparities in Lithuania, 1996-2007

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Earnings spreadAdjusted for international migration

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Note: Gross migration is measured in per cent and is calculated as total number of movers divided by population num-ber. Gross migration also includes international migration. The population adjusted coefficient of variation was calcu-lated to illustrate unemployment- and earnings spread, where unemployment is measured as the number of registered unemployed divided by population number, while earnings are measured as average gross wage rate.Source: Own calculations, Statistics Lithuania,www.stat.gov.lt

Baltic Journal of Economics 9 (2) (2009) 47-66

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Figure 2 describes the structure of tenure choice in selected European countries. There is a clear tendency for CEE countries to have relatively small rental sectors, while Western European coun-tries have relatively large rental sectors. Lithuania is one of those countries with a very high pro-portion of people, around 86 per cent, living in privately-owned dwellings. It must be noted, however, that in the case of Lithuania it is doubtful whether the share of the rental housing sector is truly reflected in figure 2, because to date no database is available that consistently registers types of tenure choices in transition countries, and the correct share of tenants is most likely to be underestimated. Additionally, due to tax avoidance a large number of small landlords (individual people) avoid stating that they let dwellings. According to the World Bank (2006), a lively, mostly informal, private rental market exists in Lithuania, and there is no reason to believe that other CEE countries differ substantially in this regard. Without exact data for the number of people living in rented dwellings, we have to rely on information from reports based on surveys and/or anecdotal evidence from other sources. According to the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (Statistics of LT 2007, 2006) the share of people living in rented dwellings in Lithuania is about ten percent.

Figure 2. Tenure structure in selected countries, per cent, 2006

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Note: The category Other/Unknown also includes cooperative ownership. In the case of EE countries the size of rental sector is an estimate. Source: Scanlon and Whitehead (2004), World Bank (2006)

Because transaction costs are greater for owners than for tenants, high ownership rates are expected to hamper geographical labour mobility (Oswald 1996, Dohmen 2005 and Munch et al. 2006). Thus we would expect interregional migratory flows to be lower in countries with high rates of home ownership. This expectation is confirmed by studies of internal mobility in the transition countries already cited. A visual test of this presumption appears in figure 3 that illustrates interregional mobility in Lithuania and Denmark, two


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smaller EU Member States with a number of similarities, but with differences in terms of housing structure, Denmark having a relatively high share of renters and Lithuania a rela-tively high share of owners. However, measurement of migratory flows is sensitive to the administrative pattern of a country. Smaller municipalities give more border crossings and so increase reported migration, while larger jurisdictions tend to give lower reported migra-tion. In order to make the comparison meaningful, migration numbers were adjusted with respect to population size, and the 98 Danish municipalities were reduced to 60 (the same number as in Lithuania) by merging some adjacent municipalities. The left axis reports predicted gross migration from a simple regression of gross migration per 1000 inhabitants of municipal area. In the case of Lithuania, gross migration is adjusted by a factor of 1.5 to account for municipality size difference between the two countries. A glance at the figure makes it clear that even though we take size of municipalities into account, gross internal migration is on average higher in Denmark than in Lithuania. This observation is also made by Hazans (2003).

Figure 3. Linear prediction fit of internal migration in Lithuania and Denmark, 2006

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Note: Gross internal migration is the sum of arrivals and departures.Source: Own calculations, Statistics Denmark, www.dst.dk and Statistics Lithuania,www.stat.gov.lt

The very high ownership rates in CEE transition countries are a relatively new phenom-enon, which emerged in the early 1990’s. After the abolition of communist regimes, the new governments sought to move away from highly centralised economies with collec-tive ownership towards liberalised market economies. In the housing sector this was achieved by rapid privatisation of publicly-owned property through the sale of dwell-ings to tenants at low prices. As pointed out by Clapham (1995), this was done without any explicit debate about privatisation and its merits or demerits. The general belief at the time was that privatisation of publicly-owned dwellings and housing construction enterprises would relieve public expenditure, create much needed funding, and lead to new housing construction. The difficulty was that reforms of the legal and financial


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aspects of home ownership lagged behind rapid privatisation. Basically, this meant a radical change in housing structure. The existing housing stock deteriorated due to a fall in real incomes, and the supply of new housing fell well beneath pre-1990 levels. In the case of Lithuania, the share of publicly-owned housing was about 52 per cent in 1991 and fell to 2.4 per cent in 2001 (Economic Research Centre et al. 2002). At the same time, construction of residential buildings fell from about 28,000 units per year before 1990 to about 4,000 in 2001 (Economic Research Centre et al. 2002). In 2007, about 9,300 residential units were built. The emergent shortage of housing may have had dis-torting effects on the labour market through its effect on mobility. Unemployed workers in depressed regions may postpone moving to prosperous regions because of lack of proper housing. However, lack of affordable housing in prosperous regions could also create movement into depressed regions if a chance exists to get proper housing at rea-sonable prices in depressed regions.

This paper is structured as follows. The next section briefly discusses theoretical links be-tween housing and mobility. Section 3 discusses the quality of data forming the basis for empirical study. Section 4 presents the empirical specification and results. Finally, section 5 presents a conclusion.

2. Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence

This section gives a brief overview of the most relevant migration theories and specifically considers the link between housing sector characteristics and migration flows. A more thor-ough review of economic theories that considers labour migration can be found in Bauer and Zimmermann (1999).

The earliest theories of labour migration are grounded in the neoclassical approach, which assumed that individuals maximize their utility function over time under individual budget constraints. Expectation of future wages plays a crucial role, and migration is mainly ex-plained by wage differences between regions. Harris and Todaro (1970) used expected wages as a product of actual wage and the probability of obtaining work to explain rural-urban mi-gration where people tend to migrate to urban regions with higher wages, even if a chance of obtaining work is modest.

Human capital theory makes an important addition to the neoclassical approach by emphasis-ing that the heterogeneity of individuals must be added to aggregate labour market conditions such as unemployment and wage levels in order to explain migratory flows. Sjaastad (1962) was the first to introduce a human capital approach. He argued that, even if large wage dif-ferentials exist across regions, migration between regions can be relatively small due to “psy-chological costs of changing environment”. Contrary to the neoclassical approach, human capital theory allows an individual assessment of the returns of moving to depend not only on labour market characteristics, but also on the individual’s personal characteristics such as education, gender, and age.

In addition to the neoclassical and the human capital approaches, in which migration was considered to be an individual decision-making factor, family migration theory considers


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the household to be a decision-making unit. Mincer (1978) analysed how family ties affect migration decisions. A family-tied person is assumed to be one whose gain from migration is comparatively small in absolute terms, and it is assumed that the family will only migrate if the loss of a tied person is fully neutralised by gains to other members of the family. Mincer’s results show how family ties tend to reduce migration, especially if it is a two-earner family. Moreover married people and families with school-age children are less likely to migrate, while divorced or single people are the most mobile.

In general, migration can be described by push factors and pull factors. Push factors are usually conditions that encourage people to leave their regions. In the Third World it is typically war and hunger that make people migrate, while in the case of CEE transition countries high unemployment and low wages are considered to be typical push factors. Pull factors are conditions that attract people to a new region, and in the case of CEE countries a better quality and quantity of housing in the region of destination can be considered a pull factor. The housing sector interacts with other sectors in the economy. Therefore, inefficiency in the housing market may have implications for the labour market. An obvious link be-tween housing and the labour markets is interregional mobility. Empirical research has provided convincing evidence that home owners are less likely to move, which implies that higher home ownership rates have a negative effect on residential mobility (Oswald 1996, Henley 1998, van Vlist et al. 2002, Hamalainen & Bockerman 2004, Dohmen 2005, and Munch et al. 2006). By reducing interregional migration, high home owner-ship rates have a negative impact on labour supply elasticities with respect to wage and unemployment differences, making regional disparities more profound and persistent. Several reasons can be identified to explain why home owners are less mobile, as has been done by Dietz and Haurin (2003). The first and most common reason is, in fact, that homeowners face higher transactional costs than renters due to the size of the finan-cial transaction involved. Secondly, a risk exists of so-called ‘mortgage lock-in’. Rising mortgage interest rates on new loans compared to currently obtainable rates can delay movement. A third reason could be negative equity. In the case of the UK in the early 1990’s, Henley (1998) showed that, when falling house prices result in negative equity for households, this will most likely delay movement to avoid realising a loss. A fourth reason is thin markets. This is a consequence of shortage of proper housing for workers and usually comes about if a region has a low share of available rental housing. Finally, taxes associated with home ownership can also hamper mobility. In a panel study of Sweden for the period 1981-1991, Lundborg and Skedinger (1998) showed that elasticity of residential mobility with respect to taxation on capital gains is statistically significant and even larger than labour or family-related effects.

The evidence outlined explaining why a higher share of home ownership hampers mobility is founded on empirical research based on economies in which housing and financial structures are well developed. On the other hand, housing and financial structures are different in tran-sition economies and therefore the reasons for immobility of home owners mentioned here cannot be directly applied in transition economies. Figure 4 compares the financing of home purchases in European countries. It is evident that mortgage loan penetration in CEE coun-tries is still very low compared to old EU countries. One has to remember that the vast major-


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ity of people in CEE transition countries became home owners through rapid privatisation in the early 1990’s, so that mortgage lock-in or negative equity only apply to the relatively small population of homeowners who bought their homes with a mortgage three to two years ago when real estate prices were at their height. Taxation is also of less concern in transition countries. For instance, there are no taxes on real estate property in Lithuania as long as it is not used for commercial purposes. Besides, interest paid on mortgage loans is deductible before income taxation, which makes being a home owner even more attractive.

Figure 4. Mortgage debt to GDP ratio, 2007

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Mortgage debt to GDP RatioNote: GDP is expressed in purchasing power standards.Source: The European Mortgage Federation, www.hypo.org; Eurostat, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu.

In the case of transition economies, only few empirical studies have been carried out on the link between mobility and housing sector structures. One of the reasons is insufficient data, especially at the micro level. Usually, studies are carried out by including control variables for housing characteristics in regression equations, an approach also used in this paper. Re-sults across studies reveal some common tendencies although these are not directly compa-rable across studies due to different regional units, data types, and estimation methods. In a study of interregional migration in Poland, Ghatak et al. (2008) used the number of dwellings per thousand inhabitants in the destination region as a proxy for housing characteristics and found that elasticity of migration with respect to housing availability was about 9 percent and it was clearly larger than migration elasticities with respect to labour market characteristics. Andrienko and Guriev (2003) explored internal migration in Russia where the share of pri-vately-owned dwellings was included in regressions. They found that private ownership was positively correlated with regional immigration and negatively correlated with regional emi-gration. Cseres-Gergely (2004) in their study of migration in Hungary in the period 1994 to


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2002 used the number of flats constructed in regions and flat prices per square meter as prox-ies for housing market characteristics and living costs, respectively. Both factors were found to be significant, with the number of flats constructed having a positive effect on migration from regions while flat prices had a positive impact on migration out of regions. Moreover, housing market variables clearly had a more significant effect on migration than variables proxying labour market conditions. Fidrmuc and Huber (2007) in their study of willingness to migrate in the Czech Republic found that owners of family houses have a significantly lower willingness to migrate than individuals in other types of tenure arrangements. A gen-eral observation was that household and personal characteristics are more important than labour market conditions in explaining willingness to migrate. These findings suggest that transaction costs associated with home relocation in CEE countries are relatively high, maybe significantly larger than in the developed EU Member States. As pointed out by Hegedus (2004), the reason for this has something to do with a home being the single largest asset in a household’s portfolio. This is common to all countries, but more pronounced in many CEE countries as can be judged from figure 5 where the high end of house price to income ratios is dominated by transition countries. Because a large part of the transaction costs follows the price of the home, it becomes comparatively more expensive for home owners in transition countries to move compared to home owners in the developed EU Member States.

Figure 5. House price to income ratio, 2007

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Note: The house price to income ratio is the ratio of the cost of a typical upscale housing unit of 100 square meters, compared to the country’s GDP per capita.Source: Global Property Guide, http://www.globalpropertyguide.com

The evidence outlined has demonstrated that housing market rigidities embedded by high shares of owner-occupied housing makes migration less responsive to spatial labour market differences. This could to some extent explain why internal migration is significantly lower


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in Lithuania than in Denmark, where the rental sector is four times larger than in Lithuania. The next step is to make an empirical investigation of labour market effects on mobility in Lithuania with control for housing market characteristics.

3. Data

In general, shortage of data from transition countries, especially register-based data, makes it particularly difficult to carry out an empirical study over a longer period. It was only at the beginning of the present decade that transition countries began to work with systematic data registration. This study of migratory flows and their determinants naturally also suffers from this drawback and the results must be interpreted with some care. The primary source of data in transition economies is national statistics offices and in the case of this paper the analysis is collected from the website of the Lithuanian Department of Statistics (Statistics Lithuania).

Data were collected in accordance with the aim of this paper, which is to assess whether a meaningful relationship exists between interregional migration and the quality of the hous-ing sector in a transition economy. Lithuanian migration data on overall arrivals, departures, and net migration per municipality in the period from 2001 to 2008 are used in the analysis with no attention paid to regions of origin or destination as this information is not available. Aggregated data are used simply because survey data containing information on housing on an individual level are also not available. Separation of international migration from internal migration is possible only from the year 2001 and migration data disaggregated by munici-palities might be inaccurate before year 2004. From that year, a central registration database has been established where all internal and international migration is registered. Therefore, results based on data before that year must be interpreted with some care because of possible errors in registered data, a typical problem in CEE countries (Hazans 2003). Additionally, one has to notice that migration in Lithuania is characterised by sizeable unregistered internation-al migration. While average registered emigration in the period 2001-2008 was 3.6 per 1000 population, the estimate of average unregistered emigration was 4.3 per 1000 population in the same period with a peak right after accession to the EU (Statistics Lithuania, 2009). Siz-able external migration probably has an indirect effect on internal migration flows through impacts on labour and housing markets.

In this paper, internal migration will be measured on a municipal level by arrivals, departures, and net migrations, all divided by municipal populations to obtain migration rates following named inflows, outflows, and net-inflows. There is some evidence of a correlation between inflows and outflows, with correlation coefficients varying from 0.36 to 0.69 in the period under consideration. For comparison: Fidrmuc (2004) finds correlation coefficients between 0.77 and 0.92 for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, while Hazans (2003) reports correlation coefficients between 0.58 to 0.90 for Latvia. The correlation between in-flows and outflows can result in biased empirical results if factors exist that affect inflows and outflows in the same direction. Therefore, it is a good idea also to report results for net-inflows in the same empirical analysis (Bauer and Zimmermann 1999). Another rationale for reporting results both for inflows and outflows is that even though some factors can have the same impact on net inflows, they may have different effects on inflows and outflows (Ham-alainen and Bockerman 2004).


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The main interest of this paper lies in the relationship between the structure of the housing sector and internal migration. One can expect that regional differences in quantity and quality of housing would encourage migration from regions with scarcity of housing, to regions with an abundance of housing, even when those regions are depressed. For example, in Latvia the third most important reason for moving to another region is housing-related (Hazans 2003).

The stock of dwellings in Lithuania consisted of 81.4 million m2 of useful floor space on 1 January 2007. This gives approximately 24.1 m2 per person or 22.9 m2 per person in urban areas and 26.3 m2 in rural areas, well below levels in the old EU Member States. Of the stock, 97 per cent was in private ownership and 3 per cent was in public ownership (Statistics Lithuania 2007). The installation conditions of dwellings lag behind conditions in the old EU Member States, with approximately 24 per cent of all dwellings without piped water, 25 per cent with no sewerage, and 38.8 per cent lacking hot water. These average numbers cover regional differences; dwellings in urban regions have better conveniences than dwellings in rural regions, as figure 6 illustrates.

Figure 6. Installation conditions of dwellings in Lithuania and Denmark

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Note: In the case of Denmark, no numbers are available on water and hot water installation, probably because every dwelling has them. Source: Own calculations, Statistics Lithuania, www.stat.gov.lt and Statistics Denmark, www.dst.dk

Three types of characteristics are available on the municipal level for the housing sector in the period 2001 to 2008, namely the stock of dwellings that are either in public or private owner-ship, useful floor space per capita, and residential building construction, which is measured as number of dwellings completed per 1000 population.

The relationship between construction of dwellings and migration flows is straightfor-ward. Construction enhances availability of housing in the region, which in turn dis-courages people from moving away from the region for housing reasons and at the same time attracts more people to the region. These relationships are probably magnified by the fact that the Lithuanian housing market is characterised by low supply of new hous-ing. This is evident in Figure 7, which shows supply of new dwellings in some European


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countries. All three Baltic States exhibited a relatively low supply of new dwellings un-til year 2006 and only afterwards did it begin to resemble levels of other European coun-tries, but was still far behind a country like Ireland, where the average supply of dwell-ings was 17 per 1000 capita in the period 2001-2008 (Central Statistics Office Ireland).

Figure 7. Supply of new dwellings in selected European countries, 2001-2008

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Note: Supply is defined as number of completed dwellings per 1000 population. Source: Own calculations, National Statistics Offices of the respective countries.

To predict the relationship between regional migration and space per capita is not so straightfor-ward. Usually we would expect that a larger space per capita indicates better quality and better availability of housing, especially if we take cross-country comparisons between western and eastern European countries. But on the regional level this relationship is not so obvious. There is more space per capita in low density/low income regions, see tables 1 and 2. Thus, municipalities with larger space per capita can actually discourage inward migration due to lower housing quality.

Table 1. Average space per capita distribution by wage quintiles, 2007q1 q2 q3 q4 q5

Mean 25.5 28.1 27.8 25.2 22.1Min 23 22.1 21.7 21.3 19.3Max 33.1 36.5 32.5 30.3 24.7

Source: Own calculations, Statistics Lithuania, www.stat.gov.lt

Table 2. Average space per capita distribution by density quintiles, 2007q1 q2 q3 q4 q5

Mean 29.5 27.6 25.4 23.85 23.2Min 21.8 23.1 21.7 19.3 21.1Max 36.5 32.5 28.3 29.3 32

Source: Own calculations, Statistics Lithuania, www.stat.gov.lt


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Unfortunately two housing variables that are expected to influence internal migration are not available, i.e. the regional ownership rate and the regional price level for housing, where the price differences of the last variable may have been used as a proxy for differences in living costs. However, the ownership rate in this case is proxied by the share of privately owned dwellings, which is simply total stock of dwellings less public dwellings. There is no a priori expectation about the relationship between the share of privately owned dwellings and migra-tion flows. Publicly owned dwellings consist mainly of rental dwellings, which would indi-cate the overall size of the rental sector in the region, and we would expect a positive correla-tion between this share and gross migration, simply because residents in the rental sector have lower moving costs than home owners. On the other hand, publicly owned rental dwellings are used mostly for social housing, and then the sign of correlation is less clear. Additionally, judging by a relatively low variation across municipalities of the share of privately owned dwellings (see table 3), it will be difficult to identify the effect of this variable. Andrienko and Guriev (2003) found that private ownership was positively correlated with migration to the regions and negatively correlated with migration from the regions.

The unemployment rate and the wage ratio are used as proxies for local labour market condi-tions in municipalities. The unemployment rate is measured as the number of registered un-employed divided by the working population in the municipalities, while the wage ratio is de-fined as average gross monthly earnings divided by average national gross monthly earnings.

In this study, family-related factors are also included. Migration is often triggered by family changes, e.g. by marriage or divorce, measured here as per 1000 citizens. If couples tend to settle in the same region where they get married, assuming that at least one of them comes from another region, then marriages should pull persons into the region. The separation of families by divorce can also trigger migration flows provided that at least one of the divorced spouses moves to another municipality. The table below summarizes the data.


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Table 3. Descriptive statistics of variablesVariable Mean Standard Deviation Min MaxInflows 17.85 11.00 4.09 114.62Outflows 17.47 5.23 3.78 39.26Net-inflows -0.54 5.21 -11.90 26.98Unemployment rate 7.38 4.72 0.8 23.8Wage ratio 82.41 12.74 66.85 152Density 251.90 631.79 12.85 3299.67Share of private ownership 97.14 1.06 92.27 98.87Housing per capita 24.94 3.46 18 36.5New dwellings 1.11 1.82 0 15.78Divorce 2.96 0.78 1 8.2Marriage 5.13 1.15 2.2 10.4

Note: 60 municipalities for the period 2001-2008. Migration flows, new dwellings, divorce and marriage are per 1000 inhabitants. The unemployment ratio base is the number of registered unemployed. The wage ratio is multiplied by 100, to get percentage point interpretation below/above national average. Source: Own calculations, Statistics Lithuania, www.stat.gov.lt

4. Specification of the empirical model and estimation results

The linear regression model is widely applied for analyses of migratory flows at municipality level, see Treyz et al. (1993), Hazans (2003), Fidrmuc (2004,) Hamalainen and Bockerman (2004). In line with this, a linear regression model is used to estimate the relationship between migration flows and housing sector characteristics. Following Wooldridge (2002) the model can be expressed as:

yit=α+β1L.Xit+β2L.Zi+δt+ci+uit , i=1,2,...,60, t=2001, 2002,..., 2008 (1)

In (1), yit is a dependent variable, i. e. one of the three migration flows: inflows, outflows, or net-inflows; Xit are time-varying explanatory variables; Zi are time-invariant explana-tory variables; ci are unobserved municipality specific effects or simply unit effects; δt are time-specific effects that are constant for all municipalities; and uit is the idiosyn-cratic error.

If unobserved effects are independent of the explanatory variables Xit and Zi, equation (1) can be estimated consistently and efficiently applying the random effects (RE) method (Wooldridge 2002). This orthogonality assumption can be difficult to justify and if it is not met the RE method will cause specification bias. To avoid this problem, one can apply the fixed effect (FE) method, which relaxes the orthogonality assumption (Wooldridge 2002) and use the within-group variation. The drawback of the FE method stems from the fact that it disregards between-group variation and therefore important information con-tained in time-invariant variables will be lost. If temporal variation is very low for some variables the FE method may also lead to unreliable point estimates of these variables.


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In general, there is a trade-off between unbiased estimation of time-variant variables using the FE method and discovering important information from time-invariant vari-ables using the RE method. In the present dataset, important time-invariant information is contained in the density variable, which varies considerably between municipalities, but has very low variation over time within municipalities. Hence, using the FE method would lead to loss of information explaining rural-urban migration differences, as a consequence of which the RE method is applied. The issue of orthogonality assumption is dealt with by including all relevant/important explanatory variables that might have an effect on migration according to theoretical considerations. Thus migration theory (Mincer 1972), predicts that movements between regions are closely related to the family situation, and Hazans (2003) reports from surveys on internal migration in Latvia that the main reason for moving is primarily family-related, second comes job-related, and third is housing-related conditions. To account for labour market factors, I include unemploy-ment and wage level, and to account for family relations I include divorce and marriage rates. Concerning housing relations, I include construction of dwellings, housing space per capita, and share of private ownership. Finally, to account for urban-rural migration, dummies based on population density and indicating urban and suburban characteristics are used. In this way I hope to catch the effect of time-invariant factors on rural-urban migration and urban-suburban migration.

Table 3 revealed large differences between municipalities, which means that each mu-nicipality has a different variance of error terms. Moreover, it is very likely that labour markets or housing markets of adjacent municipalities are linked, implying that observa-tions of each municipality are contemporaneously correlated with observations of other municipalities. Thus, in order to obtain standard errors robust to panel heteroscedasticity and contemporaneous correlation, the panel corrected standard errors (PCSE) procedure proposed by Beck and Katz (1995) is used to get an efficient estimate in equation (1). There is also an issue concerning serial correlation in error terms. The test for serial cor-relation for panel data as described by Wooldridge (2002) was applied and in all three cases the null hypothesis of no serial correlation was rejected and unit-specific AR1 cor-rection was applied.

Table 4 presents PCSE estimates for regional inflows, outflows, and net-inflows. The dwelling construction variable, i.e. completions per thousand citizens, has a significant negative effect on migration outflows, while it has an insignificant effect on inflows. This suggests that new dwellings are mostly occupied by local inhabitants, which reduces the size of families per dwelling but does not necessarily free space for new arrivals to the region. The effect on outflows clearly dominates the insignificant effect on inflows; therefore, dwelling construction has a relatively large positive correlation with net-in-flows. The insignificant effect on inflows can be partly explained by the short length of moving chains (Hegedus 2004) as the construction of new dwellings brings only a lim-ited number of existing dwellings on to the market.

Looking at other housing sector characteristics, significant influence from private ownership on inter-regional migration is found. Regions with a higher share of private ownership tend to have lower migration outflows. Since the estimate is not significant for inflows, the effect from outflows dominates and therefore the correlation with net-inflows is positive and fairly


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significant. This result might be related to the higher utility of being able to own a home. Estimates of private ownership are to some extent consistent with the findings by Andrienko and Guriev (2003) for Russia, where private ownership was positively correlated with im-migration and negatively correlated with outmigration.

Housing space per capita covers the concept of useful floor space, and the coefficients are statistically significant for both outflows and net-inflows. The positive sign for outflows and negative sign for net-inflows are intuitively correct if useful floor space per capita is consid-ered as being negatively correlated to quality of housing as discussed in section 3, namely that buildings in rural areas are dominated by single-family houses of lower quality. Figure 4 showed that many dwellings in rural areas lack basic utilities such as water, sewerage, and heating. All in all, the estimates for housing market variables are intended to capture rural-urban migration. Table 4. Determinants of interregional mobility, Lithuania, 2001-2008

Inflows Outflows Net-inflowsCoef. z Coef. z Coef. z

New dwellings 0.05 0.13 -0.61 -3.02*** 1.16 5.55***Share of private ownership

0.04 0.19 -0.31 -2.56** 0.56 3.72***

Housing space per capita

-0.01 -0.14 0.15 1.93* -0.22 -4.67***

Unemployment rate -0.03 -0.42 0.20 2.75*** -0.21 -4.03***Wage ratio 0.10 3.31*** 0.05 2.43** 0.05 2.73***Marriage rate 0.04 0.16 - - 0.05 0.19Divorce rate - - -0.01 -0.03 -0.17 -0.40Cities -8.70 -8.90*** -4.41 -5.66*** -4.36 -3.27***Suburbs 7.62 4.54*** 0.21 0.39 10.14 5.61***Year dummies yes yes yesConst. 2.28 0.11 35.18 2.89*** -50.77 -3.34***Observations 406 406 406R2 0.80 0.89 0.56Wald chi2 2165

(Pr <0.001)2992

(Pr <0.001)1136

(Pr <0.001)ρ 0.58 0.51 0.45

Notes: The number of municipalities in the sample is 58 with an average population of 57,490 and average area of 1123 sq. km. in 2008. Dependent variables: Number of migrants per 1000 population. z-statistics are based on panel corrected standard errors. ρ indicates the average of estimated individual panel rho’s. Observations are not weighted by population. Significance at 1% level: ***; significance at 5% level: **; significance at 10% level: *.

Unemployment has a significant negative impact on outflows and net-inflows, while the im-pact is insignificant in the case of inflows. Estimates for unemployment correspond nicely to classic migration theory, which predicts that people are pushed away from depressed regions. Unemployment is measured as the number of registered unemployed, but registration is not compulsory and the data therefore tend to understate true unemployment. In addition, under-reporting can vary from region to region, which can introduce a bias in the results. Moreover,


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the inclination to register as unemployed varies between unemployed persons. In some com-munities people may find jobs by themselves through personal networking, and in other com-munities it may be more fruitful to rely on services from unemployment offices.

The wage effect is statistically significant in all three cases and has the expected sign in case of inflows and net-inflows. This is consistent with the result of Hazans (2003) for Latvia, where the wage effect is also found to be significant with the same sign in case of inflows and net-inflows. The positive sign of wage in case of outflows may be related to urban-to-suburban movements, where suburban municipalities have significantly lower wages than urban areas.

Rural-to-suburban and urban migration should in principle be captured by the coefficients to the city and suburb dummies, where the suburban characteristic in particular has quite a large positive effect on net-inflows. This suggests that migrants tend to move to suburban mu-nicipalities, for instance because of higher living costs in urban areas and then they probably commute to urban municipalities. Generally speaking, internal migration is found to respond well to labour market characteristics in accordance with migration theory.

The coefficients for marriage and divorce rates are not significant. This is probably due to the fact that young people typically find their spouse within the same municipality, while divorced persons usually settle in the same municipality.

In 2004 Lithuania joined the European Union, which had a sizable effect on external migra-tion flows. In 2005, the unregistered outflow was at its highest with an estimated number of undeclared departures around 9.5 per 1000 citizens compared to the 2001-2008 period aver-age of 4.3. As a robustness check, the regressions are repeated for periods before and after 2004 to see if the results change considerably because of the large external migration flows after Lithuania’s entry in the EU (table 5). Compared to table 4 the sign and magnitude of co-efficients for net-inflows seems fairly stable, and for inflows and outflows the overall results are similar to those found in table 4, although with a few exceptions. First of all, in case of migration inflows the coefficient of new dwellings for the period 2005-2008 is positive and quite significant. This change is likely related to the housing boom in this period and not to membership of the EU from 2004. The second sizeable change appears for the effect from housing space per capita on outflows, where it is significant in the pre-accession period and insignificant afterwards. After 2004, internal migration from depressed rural regions towards urban areas was most likely replaced by international emigration, which is not included in the data. Finally, it seems that labour market characteristics have become more significant in explaining migration flows in the period 2005-2008. Thus, the effect of unemployment be-comes twice as large for outflows, and also becomes more pronounced for net-inflows. This suggests that it takes time for an economy to change from central control to market forces, and that changes may gain momentum during an upturn. With these reservations, the overall results presented in table 4 seem to be reasonably robust.


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Table 5. Determinants of interregional mobility for the periods 2001-2004 and 2005-2008, Lithuania

Inflows Outflows Net-inflowsCoef.

2001-2004Coef.

2005-2008Coef.

2001-2004Coef.

2005-2008Coef.

2001-2004Coef.

2005-2008New dwellings -0.35 0.79*** -0.62 -0.50** 1.13*** 1.31***Share of private ownership

-0.09 0.11 -0.53*** -0.31*** 0.47 0.61***

Housing space per capita

0.11 -0.10 0.35*** -0.02 -0.25*** -0.15***

Unemployment rate

0.02 0.05 0.18*** 0.47*** -0.20*** -0.34***

Wage ratio 0.10*** 0.14*** 0.07*** 0.03** 0.03 0.06***Marriage 0.49 0.23 - - 0.79*** 0.17Divorce - - 0.30 0.37 0.67 -0.34Cities -8.86*** -9.93*** -3.85*** -5.33*** -7.27*** -3.82***Suburbs 10.56*** 5.24** 0.15 -0.42 10.28*** 8.01***Year dummies yes yes yes yes yes yesConst. 8.88 -4.29 48.29** 42.5*** -45.03 -60.42***Observations 174 232 174 232 174 232R2 0.87 0.87 0.95 0.95 0.73 0.64Wald chi2 196614

(Pr<0.001)375

(Pr<0.001)6431

(Pr<0.001)64729

(Pr<0.001)6714

(Pr<0.001)14779

(Pr<0.001)ρ 0.43 0.58 0.34 0.44 0.31 0.44

Notes: Dependent variables: number of migrants per 1000 population. Only coefficients are reported. ρ indicates the average of estimated individual panel rho’s. Observations are not weighted by population. Significance at 1% level: ***; significance at 5% level: **; significance at 10% level: *.

Focusing attention on the impact of housing sector characteristics on internal migration flows, three important findings are made:

• The construction of dwellings has a sizeable impact on internal migration flows. People are less likely to move away from regions with high construction activity; it attracts in-flow and has a clear positive impact on net-inflows. Similar findings are made in studies of other transition countries (e.g. Ghatak et al. 2008).

• The share of private ownership has a negative impact on outflows and a positive influ-ence on net-inflows. This result can hardly be taken as a robust indication of higher regional mobility being caused by higher ownership rates. The data for letting do not contain information about the private rental sector, which gives too high ownership rates in urbanised areas, and we cannot exclude that the negative effect on migration for cities may have captured part of a negative effect from ownership.

• Finally, an interesting finding is that more floor space per capita does not seem to reflect better availability of housing; it rather captures the inferior quality of housing in outskirt (rural) regions.


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5. Conclusion

Interregional migration is an important factor for the efficient functioning of the labour market and one of the key interregional adjustment mechanisms aligning differences in unemploy-ment rates and income levels. Studying determinants of interregional migration can provide valuable information and help to improve policies that influence residential moving decisions.

In this paper, the relationships between internal migration flows and different socio-economic and demographic variables were analysed in Lithuania over the years 2001 to 2008 using data aggregated at the municipal level. Internal mobility was found to be influenced by housing market and labour market characteristics, but to be unresponsive to family relations. As ex-pected, net migration is negatively correlated with unemployment, positively correlated with higher income levels, and positively correlated with higher levels of construction of dwell-ings, where the last relation is found to be quite significant. This is probably due to the fact that for a long time the residential housing market was characterised by persistent undersup-ply of new dwellings. It is also found that migration flows are significantly influenced by the share of private ownership and the average living space per capita. However, interpretation of the results for these two variables is less obvious, since ownership data are somewhat unreli-able and do not necessarily imply a smaller share of rental housing. It also seems that living space per capita is inversely related to the availability of quality housing, which is probably typical for many transition economies.

More generally, the results suggest that housing market rigidities hinder internal mobility. High responsiveness to the construction of dwellings suggests that policy makers who seek to increase labour market flexibility should take into account housing supply policies in addition to labour market policies aiming at the same thing. Furthermore, in transition countries with very high ownership rates policies that increase the supply of rental housing seem appropri-ate along with labour market reforms as active policy instruments in order to reduce regional differences in employment.

Acknowledgements

The author is most grateful to an anonymous referee for detailed comments that helped to improve this paper significantly. Also many thanks to Morten Skak for useful discussions.

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Interregional migration and housing structure in an East European