October 10, 2023
Applied Research Fellowship project explores King County housing migration trends
The 2023 University of Washington Population Health Initiative Applied Research Fellowship program recently concluded their research assessing migration and displacement trends in King County through the use of novel data sources. Their findings offer useful insights for King County policymakers regarding future resource allocations.
This year’s five student fellows were a mix of graduate and undergraduate students:
- Tiffany Childs, Public Health – Global Health major
- Lily Bates, Public Health – Global Health major
- Pamela Lim, Master of Urban Planning and Public Health candidate
- Zhaowen Guo, PhD candidate in Political Science
- Rachel Song, PhD candidate in Psychology
The fellows began their work with what they knew about migration in King County — that in-migration to King County has increased rapidly over the past two decades, resulting in increased internal migration within the county. More specifically, expansion of high-paying jobs in the tech sector and pressure on existing housing supply has resulted in the displacement of low income households, especially in the South Seattle and South King County area.
The cohort’s research questions were partly informed by Data Axle, a data delivery platform; the team investigated what could be learned about migration from different datasets, where people are moving within Seattle/South King County, and the socioeconomic conditions of people’s origins and destinations. Along with Data Axle, the team utilized data from Scraped Online Rental Listings (SORL), American Community Survey (ACS) and other public data sources like the King County Assessor’s Office, King County Metro, Sound Transit, school sites and school districts and data on environmental exposure from the Washington Department of Health Environmental Health Disparities Data.
To gain a more complete picture of migration, the fellows looked at data at both the county level and area level. On a county level, the team analyzed and compared data on age-specific migration, migration by tenure, median rent by number of bedrooms and studio rent distribution. The area-level analysis included looking at migration flows across Health Reporting Area (HRA) groupings to determine in- and out- migration rates. Three specific case examples highlighted were Auburn-North, Tukwila and Rainier Valley-Rainier Beach, all under the South King County/South Seattle umbrella and areas with highest rates of migration flow.
Insights from the 10-week program included acknowledging that Data Axle can reveal the relative order of migration magnitudes and rates, that most observed internal migration is hyperlocal, a vast majority of HRAs see net migration gains, popular observed origin-destination HRA pairs are often consistent across time, and that rising rents do not seem to precede observed out-migration.
Looking ahead, the cohort recommended a calibration of distributions of household from Data Axle to ACS by tenure and/or age, an estimate of area-level migration measures by household tenure, an estimate of migration between King, Pierce and Snohomish County, and to incorporate area-level migration measures into the Exploring King County tool created by and improved on by previous teams of fellows.
This data visualization tool already includes variables on population, education level, median income, household size, methods of transportation to work and median gross rent. The 2023 summer cohort added their data on SORL to the tool as a way to deepen King County, policy makers and community members’ understanding of geographic areas and specific populations more likely to be exposed to economic risk and displacement in King County.
The Applied Research Fellowship program was launched in 2019 to equip students with data analysis, critical thinking and team science skills to enable them to effectively tackle complex population health challenges and become future leaders in the field. The program is run by the Population Health Initiative in partnership with the University of Washington’s Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology, and this year’s project was developed in partnership with the King County Demographer and Public Health – Seattle & King County’s Assessment, Policy Development and Evaluation Unit.
The application period for the summer 2024 Applied Research Fellowship program will open in winter quarter 2024. Learn more about this fellowship program by visiting its web page.