Abstract

The paper investigates the determinants of migration from rural districts in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Monarchy to the USA in 1910 by combining information from passenger records of ships to the USA and economic and demographic data on district level from the Austrian census and information on wages from an Austrian survey in 1893. The analysis focuses on the effects of the level of wages and demographic pressure. We find support for a non-linear effect of wages on emigration and fail to find evidence for a negative effect of demographic pressure along Malthusian lines on wages.