Woodrow, Karen A. 1990. “Emigration from the United States Using Multiplicity Surveys,” Presented at the 1990 annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Toronto. Abstract.


During the 1980s, the Census Bureau has conducted special national surveys to measure the number of emigrants from the United States. Residents answered questions about their immediate relatives (parents, siblings, and children) who have emigrated from the United States. Using a multiplicity sampling approach, the June 1988 Current Population Survey (CPS) yielded an estimate of at least one million emigrants throughout the world. This survey-based estimate does not include emigrants who do not have a resident immediate relative. Adjusting for such omission error, the number of emigrants surviving is likely to exceed 2 million. Of this potential population, about one-half of all emigrants had departed during the 1980-1988 period. This amount implies annual levels of emigration during the 1980s that are comparable to levels found for the 1960s and 1970s in intercensal research and analyses of the legally registered alien population. This new approach appears to be successful for measuring contemporary levels of emigration.