The Mystery of Our Declining Mobility

I'd guess it has to do with a few things that are not at all related to the recession...

1) Globalization - the lessons learned and processes formed from globalization have in a sense come back to be applied domestically. Increasingly dominant corporations usually have numerous satellite offices to be able to tap the talent and resources throughout the country. For example if you are a Finance guy and you want to work for Google that doesn't mean you have to be working in the Mountain View office (I'd assume). Just about every city has a pretty diverse set of employment opportunities.

2) Increasingly Artificial Relationships - This one is very debatable but for a number of reasons (culture, technology, etc.) Id say that establishing light bonds with lots of people is incredibly easy these days but establishing a strong support network of friends is increasingly hard. I'd guess that due to this people will increasingly be incentivized to stay within the general vicinity of longtime friends and family rather than moving across the country with the risk of never being able to build and be surrounded by a network of "real" relationships. YMMV but I think its getting harder to find 3 new great "will pick you up when you're in the gutter" friends.

3) Similar to number 1 - the US geographically is becoming more the same than different in my opinion. There are certainly still differences but if you move to another state its highly likely that you will be surrounded by a mixture of city and suburbs that contain the same types of things just with different names. Probably mass media and the internet are responsible for this one.

Interesting that the article didn't bring up economic mobility. It's dramatically declined in the US over that time period, and it's also a fairly U.S.-specific phenomenon. How much of the old motion was based on financial upgrades? I don't know but it's seems worth considering.

The two-income household must make a difference. Back 40 years ago if IBM (I've Been Moved) assigned a manager from Armonk to Louisville, the wife may have grumbled, but the family went. Now the wife's income is important and it's not as if the manager is weighing a job change vs. the IBM job for life.

It is interesting data that seems to call for explanation. Two things that have kept me personally from moving:

1. Middle class wages have stagnated while housing, food and gas expenses have exploded. There are very few jobs worth the hassle and expense of relocation.

2. If you are divorced with children, it is not possible to move very far without losing your family.

Moving is pain in the ass. You need a reason: bigger family, great upgrade, or economic necessity.

The U.S. birth rate crashed between 1960 and 1975, declining over 25%. That removes a lot of moves into bigger houses during that period.

For some reason, new housing starts were below historical averages from 1990-2000. Is that a reflection of poor demand, or lack of good space? If the latter, it could reduce the availability of housing "upgrades" which would create incentives for one to move. In other words, all of the good areas have already been built, and new sprawl in suburban area A is just as good as old sprawl in suburban area B.

The housing bubble certainly hurt mobility post-2007. When it costs you $50K to move out of your underwater house, that new opportunity on the other coast starts to lose luster. A rush to the rental market similarly caused rents to rise across the nation, so both homeowners and renters were disinclined to move. When economists talk about home ownership causing unemployment (in the sense that some jobs go unfilled), this is what they mean. However, this phenomenon may not be large enough to make a dent in the overall trend.

Over the decades, I would credit decreased transportation costs for some of this trend. You don't need to move your kids near to their grandparents when jet travel is relatively cheap. Nor do you need to move within a given state given the continuously improving highway system and relatively cheap costs per mile driven.

Finally, the decline in American manufacturing may play a role here. Factories are typically located in particular regions of the county, but service and technology industries are relatively dispersed. Therefore, if you don't want to move from Boston, or Texas, or wherever, you don't need to if you're not in the manufacturing sector.

Précis: Americans are moving their residence less than they used to, and those who are moving are going shorter distances. We don't know why this is, so we're going to say that it's because Americans don't want to move as much as they used to.

From the near the end of the submitted article: "Taylor summarizes some of that study's proposed explanations. Two-income households might be less likely to move, but the share of such families has been pretty stable in the past 30 years."

The lack of granularity in the data indeed makes it difficult to ascribe a reason to the change. The data reported in the article are consistent with the idea that workers are most likely to move when they are at an age to possibly not have spouses, and very likely not to have children. The divorce rate among previously married couples has dropped over the same time span, and as I note that the last few moves in my birth family were occasioned as often by realigning households after divorce as by seeking a new job, I have to wonder if maybe some of the decline in mobility is just a reflection of greater family stability. But it would take better data than we now have to be sure.

My last two moves were international--one away from the United States to Taiwan, and the most recent a move back to the United States--and since then I have been glad to stay put, as I can now seek employment in many places from my base here in Minnesota, and we like the neighborhood we live in as a place to bring up our children. We have no particular reason to move.

Housing crash. People don't want to sell their house for less than they bought it for. You don't pay capital gains on the first 250K / 500K per couple of gains on a primary residence but you can't deduct losses or use them to offset other capital gains. In addition people are conditioned not to believe they had a loss until they realize it and of course there are underwater homeowners. You can't move if you can't sell the house you live in.

On the up side: perhaps a more liberal, open, freedom-oriented society enables people to stay without feeling they need to "start anew" for any number of lifestyle traits that may, in the past, not have been as easy to pull off in conservative environs.

We forget how even as recently as the 60s, (as Mad Men so demonstrates) we lived in a deeply prejudiced society where freedom to live how one wanted really wasn't an option in most places.

Could it be the big sort?

"Armed with startling new demographic data, [Bill Bishop] made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by state, but by city and even neighborhood. Over the past three decades, we have been choosing the neighborhood (and church and news show) compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs."

http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Sort-Clustering-Like-Minded/dp...

This article links to Timothy Taylor's blog entry -- that's also definitely worth reading. Interesting that the same thing isn't happening in Canada or most EU countries.

I keep wondering if the population shift towards urban areas explain part of this? Does mobility vary significantly between urban & rural dwellers? Suppose: urban dwellers tend to stay put, and there are simply more of them than there used to be.

with median income growing relatively slowly over the last 30 years us households have maintained their living standards largely through lower real costs of many kinds of goods. Moving is certainly a significant financial event, perhaps we just can't afford it as often.

Thought this would be about international travel. Per head of population (to get a measure that is population irrelevant) would be an interesting break down of international travel. Have been searching with little luck. Germany seems a likely high scorer.

>George Williams • 2 hours ago

>Could be the median age has climbed since 1970.