# Inferring fine-grained migration patterns across the United States

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20989 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20989/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 26 Mar 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Data Fusion for High-Resolution Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14858/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Fine-grained migration data illuminate demographic, environmental, and health phenomena. However, United States migration data have serious drawbacks: public data lack spatial granularity, and higher-resolution proprietary data suffer from multiple biases. To address this, we develop a method that fuses high-resolution proprietary data with coarse Census data to create MIGRATE: annual migration matrices capturing flows between 47.4 billion US Census Block Group pairs -- approximately four thousand times the spatial resolution of current public data. Our estimates are highly correlated with external ground-truth datasets and improve accuracy relative to raw proprietary data. We use MIGRATE to analyze national and local migration patterns. Nationally, we document demographic and temporal variation in homophily, upward mobility, and moving distance -- for example, rising moves into top-income-quartile block groups and racial disparities in upward mobility. Locally, MIGRATE reveals patterns such as wildfire-driven out-migration that are invisible in coarser previous data. We release MIGRATE as a resource for migration researchers.