Rural/Urban Residence Location Choice
研究个人和地区特征如何影响人们选择农村还是城市居住，探讨“人随工作走”还是“工作随人走”两种假设，为农村发展策略提供依据。
People concerned about rural development need to know which effect is stronger: do "jobs follow people " or do "people follow jobs? " (Muth, Carlino and Mills; Knapp and Graves). This dichotomy has frequently been the basis of the analysis of metropolitan population and employment growth. And, the evidence supports each hypothesis under alternative circumstances. Employment is always important. But since urban locations all offer higher probabilities of employment than rural locations, rural development economists really need to know what else determines the choice of a rural residence. The rural economic development programs of "smokestack chasing, " federal funds acquisition, and export promotion (Isserman 1994) all operate on the assumption that people-follow-jobs. On the other hand, strategies based on attracting entrepreneurs, tourists, or retirees, rely on the jobs-follow-people assumption. Different strategies are appropriate for different regions, depending on the characteristics of the desired population and the characteristics of the region. In this paper we report how rural versus urban residential locations are chosen as determined by personal and local characteristics. In doing so we shed some light on two questions: (1) What types of people choose to live in rural areas as opposed to urban ones; and (2) What types of local characteristics increase the probability that people choose to reside in a rural area rather than an urban one?