Does Internal Migration Modify Income Distribution? An Empirical Investigation of the Italian Case

Since the unification, internal migration has characterized the economic and political debate in Italy. According to the labour market theory, several scholars claim that internal migration represents a useful tool to reduce income inequality. The present paper moves in this direction, focusing on the regional impact of internal migration and attempting to investigate – with reference to the Italian case – whether internal migration is able to reduce regional income inequalities and mitigate economic imbalances. In order to investigate the effect of internal migration on regional inequality, I use data concerning twenty Italian regions for the period between 2004 and 2015. Econometric results show that the migration from poorest to richest regions contributes to reduce the regional Gini coefficient. The results are robust also when a set of economic variables are added to the model.