

The Mystery of Our Declining Mobility - JumpCrisscross
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/12/mystery-our-declining-mobility/4182/

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moocow01
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.

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NickPollard
Regarding number #2, do you have data for that or is it more anecdotally? The
reason I ask is that you could be experiencing it more due to age. I have read
that as we get older, it becomes harder to develop close friendships, so you
will find it harder to find friends now compared to 20 years ago. Just a
possible explanation, might not be true in your case.

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lsc
>I have read that as we get older, it becomes harder to develop close
friendships

Hm. this is the opposite of my experience. As I've grown older, my social
skills and judgment have gotten significantly better. A huge deal, really.

Yeah, good relationships need time to marinate, so the sooner you start,
obviously, the sooner that marination process can start, and all other things
being equal, the relationship that has properly marinated longer is going to
be better, I mean, assuming you didn't let it dry out. But I'm just so much
better now than I was when I was younger, and it seems that the people I meet
are, too.

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svachalek
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.

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ChuckMcM
More interesting that they don't bring up nearly _anything_. I mean seriously,
the period in question has the highest foreclosure rate in history. I'm not
sure why I read the article, normally I skip ExtremeTech and Atlantic articles
(oh and Phoronix ones too), it is a great piece to a bigger puzzle, but I
really wish they would go get the other pieces! Its not like the data isn't
out there.

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cafard
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.

~~~
billyarzt
Good point. I'd love to the mobility data graphed against female participation
in the workforce over the same time period.

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protonfish
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.

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saturdaysaint
This is my read, too. With median incomes declining and expenses increasing,
being close to the safety net of family and established social circles has
more value. And the cost of moving must seem harder to justify for a
generation of college grads with fewer employment options and a heavier debt
load.

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codex
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.

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jessaustin
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.

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tokenadult
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.

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quantgenius
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.

~~~
jpdoctor
> _but you can't deduct losses or use them to offset other capital gains._

Not to mention: Underwater folks cannot sell if they can't afford to bring
money to the table.

And now that everyone who short-sells will be receiving a 1099 (after Jan1)
for forgiven debt, there's going to be another disincentive.

Fun times.

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redwood
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.

~~~
gyardley
I'd be wary of drawing meaningful conclusions from such a limited amount of
data.

I could just as easily argue that our increasing dependency on the government
for various forms of means-tested handouts is gradually transforming society
into a bunch of layabouts who aren't willing to travel in order to seek
opportunity.

In both cases (and all over this thread, it's not just us), we're just us
shoehorning information into our already preferred narratives without anything
solid to back it up.

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mvleming
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...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Sort-Clustering-Like-
Minded/dp/0547237723)

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phunge
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.

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trotsky
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.

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lostlogin
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.

~~~
Someone
I think this is a bad metric. Small countries would score high. For an extreme
example, it would not surprise me if the average inhabitant of Vatican City
made over 50 international trips a year (many of them of less than an hour)

Also, island nations would likely score lower (a Polynesian island the size of
Vatican City), as would 'virtual islands' that are remote in travel distance
(due to mountains, deserts, badlands, etc)

For that reason, I would think Dutchmen will make more international trips
than Germans, per head.

Maybe you should compare the probability that a one day random walk using
typical means of transport ends up in another country with the actual fraction
of travels that does?

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pessimizer
>George Williams • 2 hours ago

>Could be the median age has climbed since 1970.

