Hubs and Clusters in the Evolving U. S. Internal Migration Network

Abstract: Most nations of the world periodically publish N x N origin-destination tables, recording the number of people who lived in geographic subdivision i at time t and j at t+1. We have developed and widely applied to such national tables and other analogous (weighted, directed) socioeconomic networks, a two-stage--double-standardization and (strong component) hierarchical clustering--procedure. Previous applications of this methodology and related analytical issues are discussed. Its use is illustrated in a large-scale study, employing recorded United States internal migration flows between the 3,000+ county-level units of the nation for the periods 1965-1970 and 1995-2000. Prominent, important features--such as ''cosmopolitan hubs'' and ``functional regions''--are extracted from master dendrograms. The extent to which such characteristics have varied over the intervening thirty years is evaluated.