Given the attention paid lately to population shifts from North to South, decaying small towns, the supposed end to safe ?lifetime employment? with big companies, and other perceptions of change in American living patterns, would you believe that people are less likely to move today than they were a generation ago?
That?s what the U.S. Census Bureau reported in a new study. The 14 percent of Americans who moved between 2002 and 2003 represents the lowest mobility rate in half a century. The decline over the years hasn?t been dramatic ? rates were typically around 20 percent in the 1950s and 1960s, and then again in the mid-1980s ? but popular misconception would have you believe that rootlessness has been increasing, not decreasing.
As usual, the federal statistics turn out to be complicated and the causes varied and speculative. Read this Christian Science Monitor report for more information. Among other findings, declining mobility may be a positive sign that regional disparities in income and opportunity are smoothing out across the country. Oh, wait, I thought there were ?two Americas? . . .
