
The Typical American Lives Only 18 Miles from Mom - hvo
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html
======
sholanozie
I shudder when I think about the strain that will be placed on millenials when
we inevitably become our parents' safety net. It's a perfect storm: a housing
bubble that will pop when everyone tries to sell their house at the same time,
unreliable pensions, non-existant retirement savings, high levels of
undischargable student debt, and dwindling job prospects for young people.

It's not going to be pretty.

~~~
devonkim
The children will likely end up moving into their parents' homes and paying
off their parents' medical bills with reverse mortgages leaving the once young
at mid-life or later with nothing to inherit and no job prospects in these
areas typically away from major metro (and increasingly, employment-
availability) areas. This will leave most Americans in the positions before
WW2 about given there will be few assets in the hands of most Americans again.

I'm seeing housing prices in suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas dropping as lack
of viable jobs in these areas combined with crushing commutes to cities makes
these locations terrible for those still needing to work. There's an alarming
number of people I've heard of commuting from West Virginia into DC and from
Richmond into DC enduring 3+ hour commutes as cities that used to be self-
sustained economies now become suburbs of the largest cities, and the trend is
going to continue with a few deviants that buck the trend like remote workers
or homesteaders.

Where I live, the local economy is driven by two demographics - tourists and
local retirees sprinkled with some of the wealthiest households in the US
living here part time to avoid paying state income taxes. Much of the US is
eerily similar to this pattern and it's extremely depressing to think of a way
out of the spiral where almost all of our money will go into paying outrageous
mortgages / rent with lower-paying jobs and the few in the middle class are in
finance, tech, or healthcare.

~~~
losteric
Whats even more fun is there other major problems approaching on roughly the
same timeline...

\- Less developed nations will be transitioning to a population crunch (WSJ
2050) with huge ramifications on global economics/politics

\- fossil fuels (especially oil) reaching depletion or becoming too expensive
to extract

\- climate change impact in full swing, serious disruption to even domestic
agriculture

\- Ubiquitous AI, and all the associated social unrest of a deprecated
generation of workers

Ultimately there's just too many people. Society doesn't need 8 billion humans
anymore, the US doesn't even need 300 million... Arguably what youre
describing is an emergent solution to that problem. Now we've reached the
point where the next generation will need to support their parent's slow death
instead of raising the next generation of children... That's going to wreck
society's ownership of the future in a big way.

(Mobile, excuse the poor formating)

~~~
jczhang
Right, the issue of overpopulation is huge. It's going to need a different
kind of society with very different values than the ones we have today.
Capitalism can't grow like it has been once we realize the issue of overpop
and work to reduce it. We have a crazy new world coming. And the transition
has be fast.

~~~
cmdkeen
Or alternatively human ingenuity adapts and overcomes - Malthusians have been
consistently proved wrong in their constant cries of overpopulation. There is
still plenty of land, plenty of ability to grow food to feed us and plenty of
advances being made in areas which will allow that to increase. We've already
seen a vast decrease in the number of people living on less than $1 a day
across the world enabling many countries to start reaping a demographic
dividend.

If the pessimists can quote fossil fuel depletion then surely I can
optimistically promote fusion, carbon capture etc. Capitalism has been one of
the greatest success stories of humanity.

~~~
Spooky23
I never understood how one could embrace prophecies of doom in this day and
age. We live in a near golden age of plenty, and the train hasn't slowed down
yet.

~~~
timr
_" We live in a near golden age of plenty, and the train hasn't slowed down
yet."_

If by "we", you mean "citizens in the most prosperous cities of the world",
then yes.

If you mean "people in most of the USA", then I have some news for you: the
train's wheels are locked, and sparks are flying while everything skids to a
stop. It's absolutely shocking how much of the country has declined in
prosperity in my lifetime. The smaller cities near where I grew up -- places
that were thriving small towns as recently as the 1980s -- are nearly all
trapped in downward spirals of poverty, debt and addiction.

If you mean "the citizens of this planet", well...for most people, the train
never left the station. Even in modern "success stories" like China, you don't
have to try very hard to find appalling levels of poverty and despair. A few
have become incredibly wealthy, but mostly, people are struggling to keep up.
In the third-world? Forget it. Yeah, people can pay for cellphones now, while
they're dying of preventable diseases due to filthy water.

Optimism is one thing, but it takes a Silicon Valley (aka Leibnitzian) view of
the world to claim that this is a "golden age". Mostly, a select group of
people are getting richer, while everyone else stagnates (or just barely
inches forward).

~~~
drob
> Mostly, a select group of people are getting richer, while everyone else
> stagnates.

Actually this isn't true. Middle classes in the developed world are doing
poorly relative to the richest in the developed world, but global poverty is
on a steep decline.

Throughout the developing world, economic development is pulling hundreds of
millions of people out of poverty at breakneck speed. Check out some of the
data here, for starters: [http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-
distribution-of-pr...](http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-
of-prosperity/world-poverty/)

~~~
timr
_" Middle classes in the developed world are doing poorly relative to the
richest in the developed world"_

This, I believe. Part of the driving force of the trends in global poverty is
globalization. And despite what I said earlier about middle-class America, I
don't necessarily cry for the loss of overall wealth in this country, if it
means greater equity for the rest of the world (I just wish the richest people
in the world were paying a greater share).

 _" global poverty is on a steep decline."_

This is _highly_ debatable. The data you linked to seems to be mostly based on
the World Bank data -- a single, rarely modified, global metric of $1.25 (now
$1.90) a day, using self-reported statistics. Meanwhile, regional context is
critical -- for example, sub-saharan Africa has actually seen _increases_ in
poverty. In India and China, there's good reason to believe that wealth
inequality is _increasing_ [1]:

 _" the benefits of economic growth in many developing countries often accrue
to the rich. In India and China, inequality has been increasing in recent
years. From 1981 to 2010, the average poor person in sub-Saharan Africa saw no
increase in their income even as economies expanded. Because there is no
household data since 2012, it is impossible to know if these trends towards
greater inequality have since changed."_

Meanwhile, the metric itself is questionable (ibid):

 _" Someone living today at the new poverty line does not necessarily enjoy
the same standard of living as someone at the old line did in the past,
however....Looking at national price indices rather than PPPs, half of the
world’s population live in countries in which $1.90 buys you less now than
$1.25 did back in 2005, according to a paper released this week by Sanjay
Reddy of the New School for Social Research in New York."_

Even the _World Bank itself_ acknowledges that poverty is on the increase in
sub-saharan Africa (a region, which, by the way, has over a billion people, or
1/7th of the world's current population) [2]:

 _" However, despite its falling poverty rates, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only
region in the world for which the number of poor individuals has risen
steadily and dramatically between 1981 and 2010. There are more than twice as
many extremely poor people living in SSA today (414 million) than there were
three decades ago (205 million). As a result, while the extreme poor in SSA
represented only 11 percent of the world’s total in 1981, they now account for
more than a third of the world’s extreme poor. India contributes another third
(up from 22 percent in 1981) and China comes next, contributing 13 percent
(down from 43 percent in 1981)."_

In other words: it's great that more people are self-reporting as living on
more than this bottom-of-the-barrel income metric, but it isn't really a
counter-argument to my point, except to say that we've made the absolute
_poorest of the poor_ a bit less poor. Maybe. And mostly in China.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-
economics/21673530-num...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-
economics/21673530-number-poor-people-declining-data-are-fuzzy-tricky-work-
measuring-falling)

[2] [http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-
release/2013/04/17/re...](http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-
release/2013/04/17/remarkable-declines-in-global-poverty-but-major-challenges-
remain)

~~~
cmdkeen
We've made over a billion of the poorest of the poor less poor - that is a
massive achievement. The crucial thing about that being less poor is that they
are then not in subsistence mode and able to consider things like educating
their children, engaging in capitalism, i.e. economic activity which can
increase their wealth further rather than merely trying to stay alive.

Your quotes highlighting the problems of SSA move quickly into using
percentages of an overall number that has decreased - it acknowledges that in
all other regions in the world poverty has fallen dramatically, especially in
China where their middle class is now around 340 million.

~~~
timr
_" We've made over a billion of the poorest of the poor less poor - that is a
massive achievement."_

That's a pretty meaningless claim. Again, the data you're leaning on to say
that is using an exceptionally low bar, and it doesn't really take into
account regional economic differences. The whole reason the World Bank had to
raise it to $1.90 a day from $1.25 a day was because in many parts of the
developing world, $1.90 a day _buys you less_ than $1.25 did at the start of
the measurements!

More importantly, $1.91 a day still makes for a pretty miserable life anywhere
in the world. You're not magically on a trajectory to the middle class. You
may be dying of waterborne illnesses and malnutrition, but you're not
absolutely poor by World Bank standards!

The claim that there are far fewer poor people from 1820 to present is more
reasonable, but the problem there is that the gains mostly came from things
like "industrialization", which were big, one-time gains that, again, accrued
mainly to the winners.

------
Kinnard
I think this is terribly, painfully ironic. It's arguing that Americans are
living closer to home in order to support their aging elders.

18 Miles is not close!!! That's a commute. You have to commute to see your
mother, or for her to see her grandchildren. I haven't traveled far and wide.
But based on the few places I have been this is bizarre and unhealthy. In West
Africa, parents either live with you or a few doors down. A few miles away at
most, always within walking distance. I think this is the broad case across
the planet and in human history. I also think it's way healthier.

~~~
brobinson
18 miles is nothing in American driving culture. 18 miles is very close if
most of that is highway.

~~~
douche
A lot of people in the US commute two or three times that far _every day_ for
work.

18 miles could just be living in the next town over from your parents.

------
bkjelden
This is surprising to me. I would guess that close to 50% of my friends and
acquaintances are in the top 5%, and the overwhelming majority are 70-75%
percentile or higher.

I guess that just goes to show you how skewed from the averages the set of
people you know and interact with can be.

~~~
stygiansonic
I guess this should not be too surprising.

People of the same socioeconomic group tend to associate with each other,
because of work, similar interests, etc. This is basically a clustering
effect.

In terms of living distance from parents, if you live in an area where people
tend to flock to (because that's where the jobs are, or other reasons), then
it's further likely your friends will be in the same boat as you.

More reasons why anecdotes don't necessarily match the overall population
statistics.

* Note: Massive generalizations in my above statements.

~~~
jczhang
And of course it's not surprising among people who post on Hacker News that
they would be among the top 5%. It's just that having friends only in your
socioeconomic level will put you in a bubble regardless of how much reading
you do about the poverty of others. The level of empathy for others can really
only exist if you have personal connections.

------
NDizzle
I'm 2000 miles from my Mom, yet here I am with my three kids & wife for
Christmas.

Happy holidays everyone!

~~~
vowelless
Merry Christmas to you and your family.

------
JustSomeNobody
It's really sad that it is such a stigma in this country for the family to
stick together. One can be successful AND BE PART of a loving, nurturing,
close family.

~~~
thescriptkiddie
There isn't exactly a stigma regarding living in close proximity to your
family. The thing is that previous generations fled the cities for the suburbs
(partly because of racism), and since then we've realized suburbs are awful
places and people are starting to move back. Most people's parents live in the
suburbs, so if you want to live in a city you can't live nearby.

~~~
DGAP
Why are suburbs awful places? I'd much rather live in a small city or large
town with suburban-like neighborhoods than the over-priced and tiny apartments
of a large city. 80K here is like 120K in a metro area, and I don't have to
pay for parking or take public transportation.

~~~
philwelch
And city dwellers don't have to pay for a car.

~~~
ghaff
In most cities, they probably do or have fairly restricted ability to get
around. NYC or even SF aren't typical of the US as a whole.

~~~
philwelch
Zipcar, Car2Go, and Uber have done a lot to alleviate that. Car ownership is
definitely not needed in Seattle, Portland, NYC, SF, and probably many other
cities. In the rest of the US, most exceptions are because the US doesn't do
cities well, largely due to the perception in the mid-to-late 20th century
that white people had abandoned the cities and left them to black people, and
America doesn't care about black people.

------
salmonet
This isn't very surprising to me. 18 miles away on average is probably
significantly farther away than the rest of the world

------
almost_usual
This thought consumes me a lot. Being an only child who has a mother that is
3,000 miles away and a father that is 2,000 miles away.

------
theomega
Does anyone have comparable numbers for other countries?

~~~
theomega
German study on european countries:
[http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/CPoS/ar...](http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de/index.php/CPoS/article/download/44/130)

No need to understand German: Scroll to page 14 (of PDF). For Germany about
42% of the adult children live either at their parents ("Koresidenz") or
within 5km of their parents. European average is 45%.

------
jtheory
I married my college gf, whose parents live more than 9K miles from mine. This
does indeed complicate life now that we have children, and as both sets of
parents age.

------
altern8
A tipical Italian lives in the other room :-/

------
rokhayakebe
I would like to see data on living close to your entire family and longevity,
depression, "happiness."

------
Shivetya
I guess I am typical now, I used to be a state or two away but I am within
that limit expressed in the article now. My siblings are on the other side of
the country.

What I find more interesting is how many people don't move far from where they
are born and even more who never travel outside of their state.

------
desireco42
Not that much different from Serbians :) who would have thought.

