In 1971, the great Carole King sang: “So far away/ Doesn’t anyone stay in one place anymore?” Thirty years later, the editors of The New York Times explained that families in the United States are changing because of “the ever-growing mobility of Americans.” And in 2010, a psychologist argued that “an increased rate of residential mobility played a role in the historical shift” toward individualism. It’s a common U.S. lament that human bonds are fraying because people are moving around more and more. Americans fear the fracturing of communities that constant moving seems to bring.
Yet when King sang, Americans had been moving around less and less for generations. That decline was even more obvious when the Times editorial appeared in 2001, and it has continued to decline through the 2010s. The increasingly mobile U.S. is a myth that refuses to move on. . . . . . . . This essay (which expands on a 2010 post) continues at the online site, Aeon, here.
Update (Feb. 19, 2017):
A Pew report finds that there was a big drop in the moving rates of 25-35-year-olds of the current generation compared to members of generations of the previous few decades when they were 25 to 35: See here.
Update (May 22, 2017):
This column from The Atlantic reviews some of the debate over whether underemployed Americans in declining towns should–or can–move to better opportunities.
Update (June 15, 2017):
This essay from Vox reviews the evidence showing the folks who stay put in their hometowns tend to have many disadvantages compared to those who move away.
Update (November 20, 2019):
The New York Times reports “Frozen in Place: Americans Are Moving at the Lowest Rate on Record,” 9.8% in the last year. Odds are that within a few months, there will nonetheless be an article in the Times referring to the restlessness/rootlessness of modern Americans.
Update (January 7, 2021):
From Surgeon-General Murthy’s well-received book, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World (2020): “… the increasing … mobility of modern society” (p. 42); “… increased mobility also means…” (p. 98); “Like technology and increased mobility….” (p. 129). So it (popular myth) goes.
Update (August 23, 2022):
A new research paper by Ariell Zimran on American internal migration from 1850 to 1940 may qualify my claim of a long-term decline. Linking census records, Zimran finds that the rates of moving between counties did not change much from 1850 until the 1930s (and then declined). He also finds that the likelihood of changing counties was just modestly higher for the working-class than higher-status Americans for most of the period. However, Zimran found a clear trend toward shorter between-county moves over those decades, which he describes as a puzzle. These useful findings do not challenge the big contrast I described between 19th century and 20th/21st century rates. Nor do the findings on migration between counties necessarily address rates of moving residences which includes within-county moves. During the second half of the 20th century, rates of between-county moves stayed about the same while rates changing homes dropped noticeably (Fischer, 2002).
MADE IN AMERICA 