The act of moving to a new city is a quintessential American trait and an important part of our national character.
When I was growing up, my family moved around a lot. A whole lot. In a 10-year span covering most of the ’80s and early ’90s, we lived in seven different houses around Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Georgia and Florida. The revolving cycle of teary goodbyes to neighborhood friends and awkward first days in different-smelling schools still leaves an indelible imprint on my childhood memories.
As a young boy and up through my adolescent years, I resented these frequent moves and their impact on my social and scholastic life. To say nothing of how my siblings felt. The sum of opportunities lost or stunted in sports and extracurricular activities makes up a considerable cache of lingering what ifs.
But I wouldn’t trade my upbringing for any other. Moving with a big family to a new town every couple years or so gives real meaning to the idea of closing ranks. Despite the turmoil and uncertainty, the experience united us. Each of us learned to adapt to constantly changing circumstances individually, while creating our own firewall at home to stand behind together when things got tough. The stories alone from those days have resulted in a treasure trove of family lore.
My itinerant ways continued into adulthood. After finishing school, I lived in three more states and another country. Across two stints in California, I racked up eight separate mailing addresses with at least a year in each. Perhaps I got so accustomed to moving that I became uncomfortable, scared even, of staying too long in one place. It’s possible that my experience lies on the extreme end of what’s healthy.
Regardless, what I’ve come to learn is that moving isn’t so difficult once we’ve done it a couple times. In the moment, it can be sad. And it’s always a logistical pain in the ass. But it’s also a way to meet new people, develop life experience and learn about yourself. Very rarely do you lose something or someone, permanently, when you move on to new digs. If you do, they probably weren’t worth having in the first place.
In truth, mobility is one of the hallmarks of individual liberty, and it’s a huge part of our shared heritage as human beings, dating back to the thousands of years of hunter gatherer society.
The idea of moving to seek out better opportunity is also a quintessential American trait. From the colonial settlers to the Western pioneers, our entire history is a story of mobility. More recently, the creation of the national highway system that started in the 1950s was a key component to the post-war emergence of the USA as the world’s most prosperous nation, and an enduring symbol of our culture.
This country’s great expanse and geographical diversity keyed invention in transportation, communications and supply chain management, while bringing out the best in our inherent explorer nature. Most of what we’ve become is an indirect result of a people driven to conquer their territory. And we’re still rather dispersed to this day.
A British friend once quipped to me that America is the only country in the world in which you’ll hear someone say — possibly at an airport bar — something like this: “My family is very close. My brother lives in Seattle, my sister is in Chicago and my parents live in Houston.” We have a unique way of looking at proximity.
But something strange has happened recently. Over the past 20 years, the rate of moving has decreased in the U.S., according to Census Bureau data. After reaching a peak of over 20% in the late 1980s, the rate of movers as a percentage of the entire population has dropped consistently and is now down to nearly 10% (see chart).
It’s unclear why this is happening. It could have something to do with the fact that more young people — the demographic typically most inclined to make big changes — are unemployed and living at home. Or, as some have argued, perhaps it has something to do with our cities becoming more similar and thus offering less in the way of economic diversity than in the past.
Furthermore, high prices of real estate may be locking people into one location. Or, an aging population overall may be the culprit. If we are older as a society, it stands to reason that we don’t have the same thirst (or desperation) to get up and move on.
Whatever the case, it is clear that Americans are finding it less and less appealing to move, meaning that the economic incentives to seek out a new home or way of life are not what they once were. A 2014 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that the number of outside offers in the labor market “has shifted in a way that has made geographic transitions to workers less desirable.”
This is a shame. Mobility is a sign of a hungry people, driven to find new ways of doing things or better places to raise their families. It’s also an indicator of a healthy economy and a way that labor markets stay in balance — when the jobs dry up in one place, somewhere else benefits.
In addition to any number of social problems it may cause — domestic balkanization, increased political gerrymandering, less regional diffusion of ideas — this significant decline in American mobility reflects an enormous change in how we view ourselves as a people.
As I’ve written about before, we Americans are already facing an increasing fragmentation of our shared identity. A more complacent and sedentary geographic populace might only reinforce our collective disconnect. After all, moving not only puts us face to face with more of our fellow citizens, it forces us to deal with them in productive ways.
On the other hand, social media and increased efficiency of communications could help bridge the gap. And as my friend Michael Fenton, quoting Seneca, likes to remind me: “To be everywhere, is to be nowhere.” So, maybe this isn’t a bad thing at all.
But if it is our lot to become a country of people who don’t move as much, it’s my sincere hope that we make up the difference with more travel, both domestically and internationally. Because few things in life are quite as influential on your mind, body and soul as the shock and thrill of confronting new cultures, up close and personal. Even fewer things are as memorable.