The Mobility Myth

Pundits love to fret about our "increasingly mobile society," but Americans are actually more likely than ever to stay put.

In 2004 less than 14 percent of U.S. residents moved--the lowest figure since the Census Bureau began collecting the data in 1948, when the moving rate was 20 percent. What's more, the movers aren't going very far: Fifty-eight percent of people who moved in 2004 moved within the same county, while 20 percent moved to a different county within the same state. Nineteen percent of movers (less than 3 percent of U.S. residents) set off for different states, a bit lower than the interstate moving rate during the late 1940s. And those who move usually aren't in hot pursuit of economic opportunity: Just 16 percent of all moves are work-related. (Most people move for reasons related to housing: to shift from renting to homeownership, to find a cheaper or more spacious place, and so on.) 

"The idea of an increasingly mobile society is a widely held, but untrue, fact," says Douglas A. Wolf, a professor at Syracuse University's Center for Policy Research, who published a paper on the subject in the February 2005 issue of The Gerontologist. Indeed, according to the historian Stephanie Coontz, whose books include 1992's The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap and last year's Marriage, a History, a person born today is more likely to remain near his birthplace than a person born in the 19th century.

Article here.