Gender Differences in Long Term Health Outcomes of Internal Migrants in Italy

This article examines the long term physical and mental health effects of internal migration. We use data from Italy that allows us to study a relatively unique migration experience from Southern and Northeastern regions of Italy to Northwestern ones and to the region around Rome concentrated over a relatively short period from 1950-1970. We distinguish between impacts on women and men and between "early" and "late" migrants. We use finite mixture models to account for heterogeneity in the effects of migration and find that there is a statistically significant and substantial improvement in physical and mental health for rural migrant females. In addition, for these women the effect can be attributed to better living conditions at the destination and not due to selection. Even with the finite mixture models, we find no evidence of migration-health effects for the later cohort, nor for males in the early cohort. Finally, we do not find evidence of selection effect