I’m trying desperately to identify records where Detroit is the origin city of people who moved out of the city to elsewhere in Michigan. I have a download of Michigan records with the MIGCITY variable, but Detroit does not appear as one of the cities. Why?
I can’t solve my problem with MIGPUMA1 or MIGPUMA5 because the recoding from PUMA to MIGPUMA merged Detroit with the rest of Wayne County – a stupid decision of 15-20 years ago!
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to identify Detroit with MIGCITY. MIGCITY is constructed based on MIGPUMAs in the 1990 forward samples. Since MIGPUMAs are usually larger than PUMAs and have their own confidentiality restrictions, there are very few cities of migration that are identifiable.
However, if your analysis could still be of value using metropolitan area (MIGMET1), it looks like Detroit, MI is available for several samples.