Migration and business cycles

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1736236210

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-111544

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Jerome, Harry

Title:: Migration and business cycles

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: National Bureau of Economic Research

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: 256 S.

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VIII. The influence of economic conditions in the countries of emigration

Collection:: Economics Books

MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES An exception must be made of instances of unusual disaster in the home country. In severe famine or political oppression, even a poor chance in a new environment may appear as a relative better- ment. As a result of the severe potato famines in Ireland in the late forties of the last century, great numbers of the Irish population sought escape to the newer countries, even though the conditions of transportation were wretched and during the passage many perished in fever-infested ships. Likewise, when hundreds of thousands of Armenians were driven from their homes after the collapse of the Greek campaign in 1920, they would doubtless have gladly em- barked for America in large numbers had not restrictions upon immigration to the United States been imposed in 1921. But we are concerned here, not so much with exceptional national calamities, as with the ever-recurring succession of prosperity and depression which appears to be characteristic of the modern indus- trial organization. In this connection, the principal questions to be considered are: to what extent are cycles in economic conditions internationally concurrent, and are they of substantially equal violence; and to what extent do fluctuations in the flow of popula- tion from countries of emigration agree? Is there a substantial uniformity in the cyclical movements of emigration or does the peak of emigration from one country coincide with the trough of emigration from another? In the following paragraphs we first turn our attention to this latter question. COMPARISON OF CYCLICAL FLUCTUATIONS IN THE PRIN- CIPAL STREAMS OF IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES AND OF EMIGRATION THEREFROM Significance of Similarities. Are the year-to-year changes in the volume of immigration to the United States substantially the same for all countries? Or is the change in total immigration merely the non-homogeneous composite of many more or less divergent tendencies causing in- creases in the emigration from some countries and decreases in that from others, with no clearly predominating tendency? Such a direct comparison of the fluctuations in the immigration to the United States from the leading emigrant countries is a logical first step in determining the relative influence of economic conditions in those countries. If the flow of immigration from all countries 154

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