geographic mobility in 2011…all-time low since the start of the data in 1948
Read Taylor’s whole post, and you may also wish to click through to some of the links he provides. My thoughts:
1. After the Second World War, the U.S. population shifted for a variety of reasons. Blacks moved north, to escape segregation. Otherwise, because of air conditioning, the south became more attractive than it had previously. Factories left cities and were replaced by office buildings, eventually leading to an urban population that was more white-collar than blue-collar. The automobile gave rise to suburbia.
All of these shifts are now complete, more or less. There will always be new factors that provide an impetus to mobility, but they may not be as strong as the ones that operated in the 1950s and 1960s.
2. I think that it is often the case that in order to raise your income you have to be willing to move. Over time, people may have become less motivated (certainly less desperate) to increase their incomes.
3. Read (or re-read) Enrico Moretti’s The New Geography of Jobs. I am not saying that he directly explains the decline in mobility, but his data and analysis are relevant.
4. I believe that exit, not voice, is the best check on government. A reduction in mobility is likely to cause state and local government to get worse.
A reduction in mobility is likely to cause state and local government to get worse.
Should we care very much, though? One of the things we can “buy” with our increased productivity is worse government. This is one reason why I’m skeptical about seasteading. The marginal increase in income that such a move may generate just isn’t enough to compensate for the disutility, and I think that’s true with the vast majority of people, unless their preferences are very far from the norm. The same is true, on a lesser scale, with moving to the middle of nowhere just because it’s cheaper.
Over time, people may have become less motivated (certainly less desperate) to increase their incomes.
I think that’s true too. Stagnant median wages have hidden it for a while, but at least for people at the higher ends of the income distribution, there’s just not that much reason anymore to bother with more money. A commenter at your old blog once said
If you aren’t going to make a sudden killing that will allow you to retire, and your housing costs aren’t being driven off a cliff by a housing bubble… what exactly are you working for? Your waiter has the same iPhone you do. Nicer cars *really* aren’t that much fun for most of us. Seriously, why bother?
The same goes for mobility. Someone could live somewhere they like, where they have friends and family, or they could move to gain some marginal increase in income. But who cares, really? Even my fellow graduate students (in the bottom quintile of the income distribution) have the latest phones and apartments that are hardly hovels.
2) As to job availability, lower wage jobs tend to exist in greater abundance than professional jobs. However, they rely on sets of uncertain livability characteristics: i.e. one generally must live with family or rent rooms in private homes, as many new apartments and homes are now being built with professional level income in mind. Also, room rent reached a tipping point of affordability in many cities in the early 00s, as both home and apartment values increased. The tipping point of affordability for apartments actually occurred in the mid nineties for low income, in some cities. While there was recent decline in home value, the tipping point of low income affordability did not return. Therefore people still want to move for low income jobs but have to take real chances to do so, as these jobs are not easy to secure ahead of time unless one is able to make a prior visit to the area. Homelessness is greater in the South, in part, because people are more willing to take such a chance on moving to find employment in milder climates. It probably is not a stretch, to assume a considerable part of long term unemployment being due to individuals being forced to live in areas where they cannot find paid work.
4) Exit AND voice matter so that state and local governments will not be further distorted by the current drift of low income/high income designations. Economists are especially needed in such local capacities to show municipalities how they might be able to combine low and high income possibilities (both for the sake of individuals and businesses) and yet still have enough of a tax base for their service sectors. Every city will want to approach this differently, so any flexibility in actual building components and land use would greatly improve the process.
Arnold, a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family!
I wrote one possible explanation, which gets to your second point: http://adamgurri.com/?p=324
Short version: diminishing returns to wealth.
To point #4: Won’t bad governance become another factor that causes mobility to increase? Arnold says: “There will always be new factors that provide an impetus to mobility, but they may not be as strong as the ones that operated in the 1950s and 1960s.”
That makes mobility a cyclical phenomenon, and I would not be surprised to see bad governance become a future impetus to greater mobility. This could happen at an inter-city, inter-state, or even inter-nation level.
Also, to point #2, I think that because of the internet/telecommuting/work from home possibilities, it is easier than ever to raise your income without moving. Moving is costly, after all, so a small income bump may persuade you to avoid the cost and hassle of finding a new home, packing, and moving.
@Adam – nice post. Your explanation really resonated with me.
Thanks, Pete!
There is another big jump in mobility coming, because the internet is giving rise to increased decentralization. Rather than having to move to a tech or media or finance hub in order to get work, you can increasingly hang out a shingle online and work from any medium-sized city or small town, as long as you have decent internet access. All these internet-based jobs can be done from anywhere, which is precisely why outsourcing is taking off, as relatively poor cities in third-world countries are already benefiting from such decentralization.
This shift hasn’t been as big in the US yet, only because the arbitrage opportunity between New York and Tampa isn’t quite as large as with Bangalore, so this type of change moves slower in the US. A second reason is that the internet business model isn’t completely worked out yet: when it is, there will be a seismic shift, as many flee from the overpriced metros, contra Florida and Moretti.
Chris, you talk about seasteading as a mass phenomenon for the “vast majority of people,” when it’s unlikely there will be enough room for that many people anyway. What it will be good for is activities like gambling and prostitution and drugs that are illegal in most countries- tourism for such activities could be big business- plus for libertarians who would rather live in such freedom. One doesn’t move “to the middle of nowhere just because it’s cheaper,” you move there because you don’t have as much govt bearing down on you as in the richer areas, where the political mafia is always after its cut and telling you what you can and can’t do.