Internal Migration in the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE)

This thesis studies the short term outcomes in family annual income changes associated with internal migration in New Zealand. This is carried out through analysis of the unit record dataset produced from the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE) which is a longitudinal social survey undertaken by Statistics New Zealand starting in October 2002. Results from data analysis shows us that family migration status and time of measurement have a close relationship with family annual income. Moveover, family structure, average age of adult members in a family, education level of family members, ownership of family residential property and the number of dependent children in a family are all factors related to family annual income. We apply the General Linear Mixed Model to control these confounding variables and explore the relationship between migration status and annual income of a family. The results from our final model show that changes in the family annual income from before to after their internal migration are different for families. The difference depends on the average age of adult family members. Families with a younger average age benefit from internal migration: their family annual incomes are increased shortly after their movement. In contrast, families with a older average age experience a loss of income.