Talk:Ernst Georg Ravenstein

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He is also widely credited as inventing the ubiquitous concept in demographics of "push" and "pull" factors, presented in a paper called "the Laws of Migration" published in the Journal of the Statistical Society of London, Vol. 48, No. 2. (June, 1885), pp. 167-235. Williamgreg (talk) 16:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC) After further research for my own work, I found that this attribution is wooly. Ravenstein presented two papers to the Royal Statistical Society, one in 1885, the other (a follow-up) in 1889. In the first, he quotes a director of the census' remarks that improvements have drawn migrants. In the second, he seems to expand on that idea in a paragraph preceding his proposed re-statement of migration laws. He remarks that he takes for granted that the main cause for migration is people's intent to better themselves. This was not one of his proposed laws. His laws concern migration questions of who, where, and in what patterns. He is not concerned in his central arguments for how or why people migrate. The attribution of the idea comes from the first paper that really does develop a "push-pull" theory, one by Everett Lee in 1966. In the introduction section of the paper, he quotes Ravenstein's 1889 paragraph, and then lists it as one of Ravenstein's proposed laws (which it does not seem to be in Ravenstein's original paper). Lee then goes on to, quite originally, develop the basics of what we think of as "push-pull" theory, although he never once used that term himself in the original paper. (JSTOR has all three papers in full-text). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Williamgreg (talk • contribs) 15:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)