"Podunk."
"Flyover country."
"Inner city."
"The sticks."
"Suburban."
"Red state."
"Blue state."
We toss these and similar terms around every day. It's a routine--and easy--thing to criticize persons as creatures of their environment. Even within our community at Daily Kos, we see sharp divisions in discussion and debate which often find their roots in our geographic differences.
We don't really discuss just how powerful a force geographic mobility can in shaping one's mindset, nor do we seem to fully consider its effect on those we would convince with our positions (or defeat at the ballot box). Tip O'Neill once said, "All politics is local," and the changing nature of mobility in the US makes that epigram all the more profound.
I recently read a Pew Research study that changed my thinking about mobility. Join me below the Fancy Orange Cheese Puff for more...
In 2008, the Pew Research Center released its American Mobility Survey, entitled "Who Moves? Who Stays Put? Where's Home? (PDF document)". While these numbers are a bit dated, i would suggest that the recession that began in 2008 did not affect them in any significantly positive fashion; if anything, I would suggest that a current picture of our geographic mobility would be a step down (or several steps down) from the figures cited.
First up is the finding that took me completely by surprise:
A clear majority of Americans have never lived outside the state in which they reside, and more than one-third have never lived outside the city in which they reside.
Now, I was an Army brat--geographic mobility is a fact of life for military families--so this finding simply blew me away; I realized that the majority of folks with whom I work and interact every day have never known much of anything beyond their state's borders. Well, reading about this absence of mobility put me in a whole new frame of mind for interpreting things like
US Census QuickFacts data. Think about it; when the Census tells us that a given city, county or state is "92% white, 5% black, 2% Latino, 1% Asian", it's quite likely that at least one-third of the persons living in that area have
never experienced any other environment beyond the occasional vacation. So, when we share our life experiences or opinions based on those experiences, we are acting as journalists, if not ambassadors, in that we're effectively "reporting from a foreign land." We're playing Will Parker in
Oklahoma!, telling folks that "
Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City".
As surprising as those percentages were, the next one was eye-opening as well - geographic mobility is slowing:
The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey indicates that the number of people who moved between 2007 and 2008, 34 million, was the lowest since 1959-60, when the population of the U.S. was 41% smaller than it is now. The annual migration rate, which held at about 20% through the mid-1960s, has drifted downward since then to its current low of 11.9%.
The Pew study cites several factors contributing to this decline, including the recession that was just beginning at the time, but the long-term trend has been consistent for 40 years. This flies in the face of the conventional wisdom, which suggests that many Americans participate in internal migration; the decline in the rate of migration puts the lie to that statement.
So, in all our talk of "message" or "narrative", our comparisons of voting patterns, the naming of red/purple/blue states, and even our observations on events in areas of the US beyond our own, let's keep a few things in mind:
37% of Americans have always lived in the same town.
Another 20% of Americans have always lived in the same state.
Only 15% of Americans have lived in two states.
Only 12% of Americans have lived in three states.
Only 15% of Americans have lived in four or more states.
With a migration rate of 11%, these numbers won't soon change.
For all the resources we have at our disposal, from libraries and television to iPads and the Internet, most of us are--still--tied to the immediate area of our birth.
There's much more to be considered in the full study, from the effects of employment and education on mobility to rankings of the states as "magnet" (%age of adult residents who were born in other states) or "sticky" (%age of adults born in each state and still living there), but we can pick those up in the comments if you like.
Answer the poll below, if you would, and please share your thoughts in the comments...