Increasing Number Of Americans Staying Put, Says Census Bureau
Americans aren’t as restless as they used to be, and when they do move, more are now heading to the countryside than to the cities.
The share of Americans relocating dropped to 16.3 percent in the year ending March 1996, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday.
Mobility, dropping steadily, is now well below the 1980s, when more than one in five Americans moved every year. “I keep thinking pretty soon they’re going to bottom out, but they don’t,” Kristin A. Hansen of the Census Bureau said.
Young people tend to move more than older folks, but the decline is affecting all age groups, and so is not just a result of an aging population, Hansen said.
The report, “Geographical Mobility, March 1995 to March 1996,” also disclosed the nation’s metropolitan areas are losing population, with a quarter-million more people moving out than moving in. Declines in the central cities have been common as Americans headed for suburbs in recent decades, but now the metro areas - city and uburb - are losing to the countryside.
“It’s hard to come up with a why” for the metro losses, Hansen said. Jobs are moving to the suburbs in some areas, and people are willing to commute farther, she said. Other people may simply be choosing to live in smaller communities.
What makes the falloff especially surprising is that the report is the first to use the new 1993 definition for metropolitan areas, which often include additional counties that should result in increased population, she said.
Metro areas were growing in the late 1980s but experienced a loss between 1992 and 1993. In most other recent years figures have about balanced out, Hansen said.
For 1995-96, the net loss to metropolitan areas totaled about 275,000 people, the Census Bureau said, as cities lost 2.4 million and suburbs gained 2.1 million. The net loss accounted for people who moved to nonmetro areas.
Other findings from the report:
The highest moving rates were for people in their 20s as about a third of those aged 20 to 29 relocated during the year. The rate for those 30 to 34 was 14.1 percent. It was just 6.6 percent for those 55 to 64.
White people moved less than others, Hispanics the most of anybody. During the year, 15.7 percent of whites, about 20 percent of blacks and Asians and 23 percent of people of Hispanic origin relocated.
About 1.4 million people moved to the United States, just under one-third Americans returning from abroad.
One-third of people living in rental housing moved during the year. Among homeowners the rate was one in 12.
The Northeast was the only region to lose movers, with 234,000 departing for other parts of the country. The South gained 150,000, the Midwest 68,000, the West 16,000.
Nonetheless, Westerners were the most likely to move, with 20.9 percent changing residences. That compared with 17.4 percent in the South, 14.3 percent in the Midwest and 11.6 percent in the Northeast.