Changes in the American Propensity to Migrate∗

Published mobility data from recent U.S. censuses can be made comparable to measures of mobility and data developed by historians for communities in the nineteenth century and earlier. This makes possible an examination of long-term changes in the propensity to migrate, as measured by persistence rates. From about 1830 to 1930 a higher proportion of Americans were more likely to have been recent migrants than either before or since that time. Although the propensity to migrate has increased since the exceptionally low mobility recorded for the 1930s, people today are still less likely to have been migrants during the previous five years than were their ancestors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Notes ∗I thank I-shou Wang, Arnold Court, William Watkins, and Henry S. Shryock, Jr., for their suggestions on aspects of this research. 1See, for example, Henry S. Shryock, Jr., Population Mobility Within the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago, Community and Family Study Center, 1964), pp. 17–22, 73–76. 2Stanley Lebergott, “Migration Within the U.S., 1800–1960: Some New Estimates,”Journal of Economic History, Vol. 30 (1970), pp. 839 47. 3When the research objective is to describe the turnover of population in a place (as in this study), a measure of outmigration is preferable to a measure of inmigration. Inmigration is too easily confounded by new housing and population growth. 4John B. Sharpless and Ray M. Shortridge, “Biased Underenumeration in Census Manuscripts,”Journal of Urban History, Vol. 1 (1975), pp. 409 39. 5Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). 6Thernstrom, op. cit., footnote 5, p. 224. 7U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population, 1960 and 1970: General Social and Economic Characteristics, U.S. Summary, Appendix B. Data are found in various tables of the summary and state volumes. Data from the 1950 Census would have been added to the analysis if they were comparable. However, in that Census, mobility was recorded over only a one-year period rather than the five-year period. 8This is a commonly used procedure and is sufficiently accurate unless there has been especially rapid population growth or decline in an area. In such cases the mid-decade population might be better estimated by a geometric mean, but for consistent treatment the arithmetic mean has been used in this study. 9For example, Boston and Denver are unusual in the great size disparity between their central counties and their SMSAs, and this disparity results in significant differences in persistence rates depending on the areal unit of measurement. More typical are Omaha and Oklahoma City, both of which show no difference between persistence rates calculated for their central counties and rates calculated for the entire SMSAs. There were also inconsistencies in the definitions of areal units among scholars who measured persistence by tracing individuals, with those using census schedules generally defining areas on the basis of city political boundaries, and those using city directories frequently including suburban dwellers outside the central city. Such problems can never be resolved perfectly but are, in fact, insignificant in the present study. 10U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940: Internal Migration, 1935–1940, Age and Sex of Migrants, Table 12. Because the nonmigrant category in this Census included those born between 1935 and 1940, it was necessary to use outmigrant data. The percentage of the estimated 1935 city residents who had migrated out of the city by 1940 was determined, and it was estimated that five percent of the 1935 population had died by 1940. Persistence could then be calculated indirectly. For data supporting this mortality estimate, see Donald J. Bogue, The Population of the United States (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1959), pp. 171, 177. 11Simon Kuznets and Dorothy S. Thomas. Population Redistribution and Economic Growth: United States, 1870–1950 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1964), Vol. 3, chapter 6, Table 1.38. 12If adult male populations are considered to include those males over age fourteen at the base year, then adult males between 1870 and 1910 had a some-what greater rate of interstate migration than the total male population. If the age at which one is considered an adult is raised, then the adult males showed a slightly lower rate of interstate migration than the male population as a whole. 13Kuznets and Thomas, op. cit., footnote 11. Approximately one-third of the adult males in cities like Boston and Omaha in the nineteenth century were foreign born. The best data suggest a sex differential among the foreign born that was slightly less than but not very different from that for native whites (Table 1.40). Any sex differential among black migrants did not affect most cities here, as few blacks had migrated to these cities before 1910. 14Shryock, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 347–48. 15Sidney Goldstein, Patterns of Mobility, 1910–1950: The Norristown Study (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958), pp. 208–09; Peter A. Morrison, “Chronic Movers and the Future Redistribution of Population: A Longitudinal Analysis,”Demography, Vol. 8 (1971), pp. 171 84; and Alden Speare, Jr., “Homeownership, Life Cycle Stage, and Residential Mobility,”Demography, Vol. 7 (1970), pp. 449 58. 16Kenneth Land, “Duration of Residence and Prospective Migration: Further Evidence,”Demography, Vol. 6 (1969), pp. 133 40. 17It might seem from Table 3 that Boston and perhaps other eastern or relatively old cities could be characterized as having very low cumulative inertia but this is not necessarily the case. For example, Thernstrom determined that only eighty-four percent of Boston's 1880 adult males remained after just one year, although the ten-year persistence rate was sixty-four percent. Clearly a radical change in persistence rate occurred sometime after the first year. (No five-year rate was available.) See Stephan Thernstrom and Peter Knights, “Urban Population Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Tamara Hareven, ed., Anonymous Americans (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 17–47; reference on p. 24. 18Because of the variability of rates from place to place, mean rates were calculated for only those decades for which three or more rates were available. Thus, the rate for Salem in the 1800 decade and the rates for Boston and Norristown after the 1910 decade were excluded (Table 2). Additional reasons for using with caution the more recent Boston rates calculated by Thernstrom were the varied and not altogether satisfactory choice of sample populations and the great difficulty of tracing individuals in that increasingly large and complex metropolitan area. 19For a review of these results see Peter A. Morrison and Daniel A. Relles, Recent Research Insights into Local Migration Flows, Paper No. P–5379 (Santa Monica, California: The Rand Corporation, 1975), pp. 2–4; 32–38. 20Bogue, op. cit., footnote 10, p. 376; Census of Population, 1960 and 1970, op. cit., footnote 7, Table 72. 21Dorothy S. Thomas, “Age and Economic Differentials in Interstate Migration,”Population Index, Vol. 24 (1958), pp. 313 18; and Hope T. Eldridge, “A Cohort Approach to the Analysis of Migration Differentials,”Demography, Vol. 1 (1964), pp. 212 19. 22The eight-year rate was fifty-four percent. See James A. Henretta, “Economic Development and Social Structure in Colonial Boston,”William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, Vol. 22 (1965), pp. 77 80. 23John Demos, “Notes on Life in Plymouth Colony,”William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, Vol. 22 (1965), pp. 264 86. 24Linda Auwers Bissell, “From One Generation to Another: Mobility in Seventeenth-Century Windsor, Connecticut,”William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, Vol. 31 (1974), pp. 79 110; reference on p. 102. 25Persistence for adult males over ten years averaged over seventy percent, suggesting a five-year rate near eighty percent. See Kenneth A. Lockridge, “The Population of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736,”Economic History Review, 2nd series, Vol. 19 (1966), pp. 318 44. 26Phillip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1970), p. 212. 27Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 168–70. 28Thernstrom, op. cit., footnote 5, pp. 39–44, 229–32. 29Morrison, op. cit., footnote 15; Sidney Goldstein, “Repeated Migration as a Factor in High Mobility Rates,”American Sociological Review, Vol. 19 (1954), pp. 536 41. 30Similar relationships of 1) a positive correlation between rates of inmigration and outmigration for metropolitan areas, and 2) consistent contrasts over time in the population turnover rates of different metropolitan areas have been noted in recent migration research. Places which have the employment opportunities to attract migrants also lose migrants at a more rapid rate than places which consistently offer fewer opportunities. The explanation seems to be that the former places have, in effect, selected inmigrants who are highly prone to migrate again, and who circulate frequently among places which have good job opportunities. Thus, a population with low persistence (“chronic movers”) tends to characterize these places. See Morrison, op. cit., footnote 15; and Morrison and Relles, op. cit., footnote 19, esp. pp. 23–40. 31Also, if there had been better evidence that cumulative inertia was greatest in rapidly growing places, then the transformation of ten-year to five-year rates might have been accomplished by different equations for places depending on their growth rate. This would have produced a greater regional distinction in persistence rates during the nineteenth century between the older settled East and the younger West. 32Thernstrom, op. cit., footnote 5, pp. 226–27. 33Vance Packard, A Nation of Strangers (New York: David McKay Company, 1972)

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