Woodrow-Lafield, Karen A. and Ellen Percy Kraly. 2004. “Points of Departure: Emigration from the United States,” Presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Boston.


The answer to the simple question of the number of U.S. residents having left in the 1990s to live abroad has involved multiple “answers” of varying sources. The tasks of measuring quantities of emigration or return migration and the number of U.S. born persons or former U.S. residents living abroad depend on a crude science of scrutinizing various data sources and indirect estimation. Drawing from several studies about emigration levels and return migrants for 1950-2000, this review covers definitional issues, analytic universe, study populations, period influences, heterogeneity of at-risk populations, constituencies of emigration estimates, and alternative findings. We conclude with discussion of strategies for augmenting U.S. population statistics on emigration that meet criteria of understandability, credibility, and feasibility.