Do Reservation Native Americans Vote with Their Feet? A Friendly Comment

I IN A RECENT ISSUE of this journal, Geib (2001) provides an interesting and well-executed analysis of the potential impact of "welfare" on migration of Native Americans over the 1985-1990 period. The study by Geib (2001) can be interpreted as paralleling a co-authored paper by Cebula and Belton (1994). This brief, friendly Comment seeks to clarify certain distinctions between the two studies and to raise a few concerns regarding the Geib (2001) study that can presumably be addressed by the author herself. II THE STUDY BY CELBULA AND BELTON (1994) deals with aggregate-level data of an interstate nature over the 1985-1990 study period. The study by Geib (2001, p. 819) deals with micro-level data that involves, among other things, whether" ... a household head moved from a reservation area to a non-reservation area in another state . . ." during the same study period. It is important to stress that the "dependent" variables in the two studies are different not only because in one case aggregate migration at the state level is considered whereas in the other case migration at the micro level from reservations is considered, but also because in Geib (2001), the migration variable is gross out-migration, unscaled by the size of the Native American or total state population, whereas in Cebula and Belton (1994) the migration variable is the net in-migration rate, expressed as a percent of the state's 1985 total state population. Thus, the differences between what is being measured and investigated in the two studies are not trivial. There are also potential issues regarding the right-hand side (explanatory) variables in the Geib (2001) study. For example, consider the variable rent, defined as the "average rent by state of residence in 1990" (Geib 2001, p. 820). Presumably, this variable is adopted as a control variable to correspond to the variable COL, which in Cebula and Belton (1994) was a geographically comparable index of the average cost of living in each state. It appears that both the variables averent and COL are state-level variables. If not, then the variable averent should have been defined expressly as the average rent paid at the reservation level. There are two potential problems here. First, the year chosen is 1990; however, since 1990 is the end of the study period, it would seem that use of a 1985 (or average rent over the 1985-1990 period) rent variable would have been logically more relevant (and less likely as well to reflect the impact of general migration patterns over the 1985-1990 period). Moreover, the variable COL as constructed is a geographically comparable series, whereas there appears to be no such comparability for the averent variable. Indeed, it would seem that the latter should itself have been scaled by a variable such as COL in order that the average rent levels between states could have been compared in terms that were in fact comparable. In the Geib (2001) study, there may be a question as to why the variables assoc, to reflect whether a party has earned an associates degree, and bach, to reflect whether a party has earned a BS or BA degree, are both included in the same estimate. …