A cost-benefit model of rural to urban migration in Taiwan.

Abstract Migration is a form of human behaviour which has lent itself to careful measurement for a relatively long period of time. In 1885 Ravenstein set forth certain empirical laws concerning the relationship of migration to age and distance which have held up to the present. Since then an abundance of migration data has enabled social scientists to develop more precise models relating the volume or rate of migration to characteristics of the migrants or of the areas of origin and destination. Prominent among these models are the gravity model, the intervening opportunities model, a gravity type model including wage rates and unemployment rates developed by Lowry, and the Cornell mobility model.