10 ms·

Nearly six in 10 US young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up

189 points by amyamyamy2 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago
60% of young adults live within the metro area they grew up in, at age 26. That's not surprising, especially with how many college graduates move home now. I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial amount of the remainder stay near where they colleged.
emodendroket 4y ago
When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a sign of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so high. I guess not everyone was thinking the same way.
- ckosidows 4y ago
  Coming from a smaller town (<30,000) I was pretty much taught this. I couldn't go a month without someone wishing I would move away and leave the town behind. I live in a bigger city now and I'm glad but it took effort not to feel ashamed of living in my home town for so long. Most people in America are born and live in metro areas and I wonder if the same kind of mentality is taught to those people?
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I lived in the metro NYC area.
- kcb 4y ago
  Most Americans live in and around big cities. Ive lived my entire life in commuting distance to Manhattan along with 10s of millions others. There was never any notion from myself or my peers of having to move to "make it". The end goal was always to find a job and get on a bus or train every morning.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    So did I (well if you can tolerate a long commute but many people did it). It's not about chasing opportunities that don't exist, necessarily, but striking out on your own and leaving the familiar.
- bradlys 4y ago
  > When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a sign of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so high. I guess not everyone was thinking the same way. It’s possible that they just gave up earlier than you did. Many people where I grew up never put any effort into anything because they had resolved themselves to being helpless.
cpsns 4y ago
I fall into this group in Canada and I wish I didn't at this point.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
11% have never travelled outside of the state where they were born, so this doesn't actually surprise me that much.
thepangolino 4y ago
That's a pretty common statistics all around the world. People connect to their the place they grew up in and people they grew up with.
- mikrl 4y ago
  In my experience, moving is related to aspiration. If I stayed where I grew up I’d honestly likely be an opioid statistic and definitely not doing anything worthwhile with my life. I still keep in touch with a few people from youth who didn’t ruin their lives, and I’m the standout success story despite being the socially awkward and poor one. Moving thousands of miles has changed my life in ways I’d never dream of, staying still was not on the cards: it would have been lethal. I had to upend to get the education I needed, find my person and the tech job I love.
  - tricksforfree 4y ago
    Imagine if you and similar, "driven" folk stayed and made where you're from better. Imagine if you started small businesses and hired/trained the locals. Maybe everyone left behind wouldn't have to work at a big box store or just die to reduce the societal burden. Edit: Not blaming, just food for thought.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      A little fantastical to imagine well-meaning people with zero experience of work are going to fix places that nobody else managed to but hope springs eternal, I guess.
    - lukas099 4y ago
      All else equal I would love to live by all my family and friends, but the fact is that my skills are not as useful there as they are where I live now, so I wouldn't be able to provide as much value to the world if I still lived there.
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      Trying to jump-start a modern economy in a place that isn't currently participating in one is difficult, like attempting a breakaway in bike racing. It's a worthy public project, but a risky private one.
ifightcrime 4y ago
Makes sense.
irrational 4y ago
That is mind boggling to me. I don't know anyone that lives in the same state they grew up in. I live about 3,000 miles away from where I grew up. I have 7 siblings and none of us live in our home state (and none of us live in the same state as another one - we live in NY, CA, MI, TX, OR, OH, UT, CO - we grew up in FL). Though, I remember that one of my brothers once lived in Pennsylvania and he met 2 women who had never left their county and were amazed that he lived in so many other places and wondered out loud if he had been scared to live in places other than where he lived right then in PA. The mind set that other places are scary to live in is so foreign to me.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Probably the "move around a lot" people don't talk much with the "don't move around much" people, and vice-versa.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    When I used to live in Massachusetts I found it boggling how many people had never lived anywhere else. Southern California, where I now live, I think actually has a narrow transplant majority.
    - thebradbain 4y ago
      Which is fascinating, because while we know California is technically net-outward migration (people moving to other states), the demographic of people net MOVING to California is by people in the top 5%. California is essentially gentrifying at the state level with wealthy transplants, pushing working and middle class people who grew up here out of the state. [1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-tax-california-wealthy-20190311-story.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-t...
      - emodendroket 4y ago
        You can't win, huh? Move to California, you're gentrifying it. Move out of California, you're gentrifying wherever you go. Perhaps this framework isn't the best to think about it.
cwmoore 4y ago
; the other four are outnumbered.
perardi 4y ago
We have become an increasingly urbanized country. Lots and lots of people in massive metro areas—think of the hypersprawl around Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, LA… Living 10 miles away from where you grew up around Chicago can put you in a total different socioeconomic level of suburb.
- samgranieri 4y ago
  As someone who has lived in Chicago and the Chicago suburbs, this is completely true
- hnuser847 4y ago
  Yep, I live in Chicago and I'm about 10 miles from my parents' house, as the crow flies. I have at various times in my life regretted not moving around and living in different cities, but I didn't feel the urgency to move a thousand miles away from home since I grew up next to one of the largest cities in the US. I imagine that if I had grown up in a small town, like my wife, moving far away from home would have been the only option.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    I grew up in a small town. Lived in and around Chicago for about 10 years as a young adult. Didn't ever like it enough to think that I wanted to put down roots there. Moved back to my hometown and still live there.
  - rowanajmarshall 4y ago
    That's what it was for me. I grew up in a tiny farming town; if I wanted a job other than farmhand, retail, or local government, moving was the only option. And I did, 3 days after graduating.
  - rhino369 4y ago
    I left Chicagoland and wish I could go back.
    - granshaw 4y ago
fdsfdxfvcx 4y ago
i had the best of both worlds. moved from my hometown to seattle for while, made a lot of money in tech, bought and sold a house in seattle at the right time, moved back to my hometown. now i have a paid off house 5 mins from the house i lived in during high school. i was able to keep the seattle salary so now i am living like a king in my old hometown, honestly its amazing
WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
I've regularly read that most people in the world live and die within 50 miles of where they were born. Even now that travel is so common.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Travel is common for the top 10-20% richest people in the world. For 80% of the world, travel is something that 'other people' do.
rr888 4y ago
I'm just amazed in my new job I actually have an American in my team.
- rr888 4y ago
  Actually after being away from home for 20 years I'd love to go back but wife and kids prefer staying :(.
  - granshaw 4y ago
    Same sometimes I dream of working remotely and taking my USD savings and enjoying the luxe life back in SE Asia
saraton1n 4y ago
I was a military child, and so I moved around my whole life. My best friend has lived their whole life in the city I live in now. Sometimes I get a little jealous because I don't have any heart-connection to any place. Most of the friends I regularly talk to are people I've met within the last 5 years, and I still don't have any still-standing friendships from the time before my dad retired. But also, I cannot imagine that life, nor do I know if I really want to. Moving around so much gave me such a wide array of interests and cultural knowledge about places in and outside of the US. I think the benefits of that well-rounded background outweigh whatever pangs of sadness I get occasionally about not really feeling like I have a homeland.
- fdsfdxfvcx 4y ago
  had that too, the place my dad retired to became my "hometown" having said that, as i got older and started having kids, i did move back to that hometown. i honestly did enjoy moving every 1-3 years as a kid, but my wife had a similar experience and did not enjoy it. now my kids have a home town and can see both sets of their grandparents every week or so. its also pretty cool taking my kids to the same restaurants and places that i went to when i was younger. based on how much trouble my 5 year old had with this move its not something i want to subject them to any more times(shes happy about it now and we wanted to get it over with before kindergarden etc starts). people like us who had a positive outcome from moving constantly are the outliers i think, its better to give the kids a sense of continuity.
  - saraton1n 4y ago
    Yea, my brother has wholly set his roots down there, and so I know my family will be settling here somewhat permanently, which is odd to me because I know this isn't the place for me. But, my brother has a kid and I'm much less likely to, so it makes sense my parents want to remain close. I think I'd want to raise the kid with a sense of continuity, but also travel a lot. maybe even move to another country for a bit before returning back to the place i'd picked to raise them. who knows?
- aaronax 4y ago
  What are the concrete benefits of such a well-rounded background?
user3939382 4y ago
All IMHO of course: we'd be better off if it was 9 of 10. The family is the most important institution we have, it is the backbone driving the most valuable members of our society. The stronger and more cohesive it is the better. There's a countervailing factor which is that more earnings and economic output arise from jobs in urban areas, which historically can only happen if some members relocate. Hopefully the trend towards remote work helps alleviate this conflict.
- babelfish 4y ago
  [Citation required] for almost every sentence in your post - most importantly "it is the backbone driving the most valuable members of our society". What a ridiculous assertion.
  - user3939382 4y ago
    I guess you missed the first two words of my comment.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Given that virtually every human is raised in a family, I think you’re the one that needs to prove your outrageous statement to the contrary.
  - tsol 4y ago
    It's not that crazy. Even economically, the people that are gonna support us when we are old and senile are currently being reared as part of families
  - grumple 4y ago
    It's easy to verify that married people make more money than unmarried people: https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/married-wage-gap/#:~:text=That%20married%20people%20make%20more,to%20be%20greater%20for%20men https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/married-wage-gap/#:~:text=.... It's easily verified by data you can find in many studies, and presumably the census itself. Of course it doesn't technically prove causality - it could be that the type of people who are successful just happen to be the same type of people who get married. Or maybe they get married precisely because they are successful - or unsuccessful people have a harder time finding spouses.
fullshark 4y ago
A lot of upperwardly mobile, ambitious people don't realize this, or they generally understand it only in terms of chastising their high school peers who stayed home. If you build a society based on the assumption everyone will simply move and re-skill to the regions with economic opportunity, you get a lot of regions of bitter people who stayed behind somewhere and watched their local economy get destroyed by trade deals and technological advances, and that's how you get an anti-globalization populist political movement.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  You also have the issue of people who move to high cost locales, raise kids and then their kids who especially can't afford it move away (or wait to inherit the house from you).
- Fauntleroy 4y ago
  I'm one of the "upwardly mobile" folks who moved out, and I'm a bit shocked at all the comments here treating the headline like it's a bad thing. Having a local and consistent community is an essential part of a "good" city. I know that many of the places we moved away from were... lacking, but simply abandoning everything isn't going to help at all either.
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    I have moved quite a bit myself and honestly still miss 'home'. Hopefully soon I'll stay somewhere for the rest of my life, or a good chunk of it, so I can be 'home' again. My wifes a researcher and we follow the academic positions so I probably have another 3 or 4 locations to live in first (: There are a lot of perks of having that stable community feeling around you.
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  Part of it, as well, is that a lot of these regions that people moved out of are the suburbs. Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading.
  - 4y ago
jchanimal 4y ago
I wish the data explorer also showed per-capita moving rates. It's hard to tell if a place is sending proportionately more migrants to another place or if the source just starts with a high population.
atlgator 4y ago
If I had become a doctor or a hotelier I definitely would've stayed in my home town. I miss it greatly, but there's zero tech presence and remote jobs seem to be drying up.
- dibt 4y ago
  > If I had become a doctor or a hotelier I definitely would've stayed in my home town. According to the study, you would likely have not stayed: "By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in affluent families." A low-income family is less likely to send their kid to school to be a doctor or hotelier.
amelius 4y ago
America, land of the free ... well perhaps not.
nerdjon 4y ago
This just seems insane to me. I purposefully graduated early from highschool (1 semester less and it only worked because of where my birthday was) to move 853 miles from where I grew up to where I currently live. My partner did a similar move (before we met). When I talk to most of my friends it is a similar story. I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious reasons). Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south (as are many of my friends), I also wanted to move to an urban city like so many in my generation. This just seems insane for me to think about.
- why5s 4y ago
  > I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious reasons). We want to. But between housing prices and student loans, we can't afford to.
- paulcole 4y ago
  It seems insane to me to think about taking to my parents weekly. I know they exist, I don’t need to talk to them. What seems unimaginable to one of us is not just normal but desirable to the other. The same is true for deciding where to live.
  - nerdjon 4y ago
    Just to clarify, what I find insane is the numbers because it doesn't line up with my experience within most of the people I generally talk too
  - brewdad 4y ago
    I'm in the same boat. Sometimes I wonder if there is something wrong with the way I'm wired but while I love my Dad and we've always had a good relationship, I don't need to talk to him regularly. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with the strong family bonds that so many in this thread have. We lived 2.5 hours away from my Dad's family and saw them about 6 times a year. We lived 1500 miles from my Mom's family and I probably visited my Mom's parents a dozen times in my entire life. Now, my wife and I live 2500 miles from our parents. Half the year it's further than that since one set winters in Florida and the other in Asia. At times I feel like I've totally missed out on something but at the same time I wouldn't move back "home" probably ever. I've lived in my current house for 18 years. It's the longest I've ever lived anywhere. This is "home" now.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
Wow, I really did not expect it to be that high. I could understand that number if it was "live in the state where they grew up" (esp. if they went to college in-state which most do), but within 10 miles? That's a pretty small radius. In many cities you could move to the other side of town and be outside the 10 mile range.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
I would say that I owe my career to not staying in my home town or even my home state. The state has plenty of charms but opportunity is generally speaking not among them. Those of my graduating high school class who I've followed since also moved out of state. Looking at the data from this tool it seems we were outliers, though. With remote work being more common now I could probably move back, but that would carry some amount of risk as long as I'm working for another company rather than running a business of my own. Where I live now has a decent balance between locally available jobs and cost of living which is a bit scary to give up.
theonemind 4y ago
It's really too bad that people have to move around for economic and other opportunity. It kind of speaks to the damaged modern psyche with illnesses like schizophrenia virtually absent in the ancient world that anyone would regard not dispersing from their home area as a bad thing. Like, we all just aspire to the condition of the multi-national economic elite, paying allegiance to no country or place, making an abode of bouncing around a few world cities. Like, maybe we just shouldn't have crappy places that people need to flee, by putting roots in the community and making it a place to be.
- dibt 4y ago
  > It's really too bad that people have to move around for economic and other opportunity. The article doesn't support your bias. It's mostly those from affluent families that move farther from home, not people looking for work. "By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in affluent families."
aftbit 4y ago
I moved away from home but I moved back as well. I now live within 10 miles of where I grew up, but I spent 7 years in the sf bay area, 2000 miles away.
cletus 4y ago
So my family has long described ourselves as nomadic. We just seem to get the wanderlust and want to pick up and move after some years in some place. I myself have lived in 5 different countries so far. My great-grandfather (who died long before I was born) was a fairly extreme example of this. Shortly before WWI he decided to jump on a boat in Germany and immigrate to Australia (coming originally from the Baltic states). It seems like a fortuitous time to leave Europe. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. His brother did basically the same thing (although in his case he was partly motivated by escaping getting conscripted into the Army). His story is fascinating too. A book was even written about it. He actually found an abandoned boat, fixed it up, made his own instruments and sailed to America in the 1930s across the Pacific Ocean because he always wanted to visit America. I think about that and wonder what is it about some people who seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to staying pretty much exactly where they were born. I don't really understand that mindset but in some ways I envy it. One of the most culturally identifiable songs to Australians is a song from the 1970s called Khe Sanh by a band named Cold Chisel. It's quite literally about a Vietnam vet with PTSD. it has a verse that goes like this: And I've traveled 'round the world from year to year And each one found me aimless, one more year the worse for wear And I've been back to Southeast Asia, and the answer sure ain't there But I'm drifting north, to check things out again, yes, I am I think about that too.
- canniballectern 4y ago
  > what is it about some people who seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to staying pretty much exactly where they were born IMO the main factors would be your economic situation and your relationship with your family. People with little money and tight family ties probably wouldn't be keen to move very far, whereas someone with a bad or indifferent relationship to family and the means to head elsewhere would probably do so.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    I feel like relationship to family isn't as big of a limiter these days. I'm pretty close with my family and do miss them (they being on the other side of the world), but being able to video call them essentially whenever our waking times line up takes care of a lot of the issues. As a result of which I can still share any problems I have and get advice or similarly help them in dealing with their problems. The few years my siblings spent half the world away from us prior to the proliferation of smartphones (and thus the ability for video calls to just happen whenever instead of being specifically organized) did seem to strongly weaken their relationship with the rest of the family though. They seemed to feel abandoned due to essentially having to grow up on their own (ie finish up college and start working) due to not being able to as easily share their issues.
keewee7 4y ago
Ten miles is huge in an increasingly urbanized world. Within a ten miles radius from where I lived in 2017 there was some of the most expensive housing in the world and ghettos with weekly gang shootings. However the city I lived in is objectively regarded as one of the best places to live in the world: Copenhagen, Denmark.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Ten miles might make a difference in housing or neighborhood quality, but makes little difference in access to job opportunities, higher education, social activities, etc. Especially if one owns a car, as most Americans do.
dibt 4y ago
This is is an important detail missing from the title: "Childhood locations are measured at age 16 and locations in young adulthood are measured at age 26." "By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in affluent families." It's not all young adults, just a specific demographic we would expect to move away farther from home. Many people in this thread are using this to confirm their bias that it says something about the young adults. The title is doing more harm than good.
crooked-v 4y ago
I'd be interested to see this data weighted against population density. As-is, I suspect it's massively tilted by how in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, or NYC you can go 5 miles and practically be in a different country.
Yhippa 4y ago
I moved from where I grew up. The biggest advantage is access to better career paths and potential with my career. If I get laid off, there are more diverse work options, unlike where I grew up. The flip side is that being able to have family help out easily when our kid is sick. Also I have friends who stayed back home (the ratio matching this article title pretty closely) and they have barbecues together, can hang out on a random night around a fire pit, watch movies in their backyard, and other fun things. About planting roots and settling down. I'm really torn about these two ways of going about it. There's something very comforting about setting down roots and having a solid network of friends and family. The flip side is that you're probably leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. The history of success in America seems to lean towards being nomadic.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  I feel like with remote work, it's possible to have your cake and eat it, too. Depends on your career, but at least in software, it no longer feels like you have to move to a tech hub to make it, for example.
- siquick 4y ago
  Depends on your definition of success? I moved to the other side of the world from where I grew up in my early 30s, and I grew up at the other end of the country from where I was born and lived my early years. I have a great group of mates I met in my early twenties and still speak with daily on WhatsApp. As you say they meet up regularly, know each others families well, and they have not left their home area and have been friends since primary school. They’re all jealous that I have lived an “adventurous and exciting” life and I’m jealous that they have amazingly solid roots.
  - dorchadas 4y ago
    I'm in pretty much this exact situation right now (we actually all left then returned in early/mid 20s after university), and, well, it's still lonely. WhatsApp (or, in our case, Discord) is no substitution for physically being able to meet up. I have friends where I live now, but it's not the same level of depth in the friendship, where we'd just go to each other's houses and shoot the shit for hours about everything and nothing (as we've done since high school) and I feel that is something I didn't realise I wanted and was missing until I moved. It's actually got me seriously reconsidering returning. Gonna be hard leaving after Christmas this year.
cassonmars 4y ago
I moved away from my Midwest hometown in my early twenties, lived in Seattle for nearly a decade, then got fed up with the path the city was on and moved back. I feel like moving away is valuable, and teaches you to appreciate the things you took for granted living somewhere during your childhood. Now that I’m back, I get to help fundamentally transform the city into a new tech hub, reviving from the state of decay produced by an industry that mostly abandoned it. This has been extremely fulfilling in a way that living in an already established big city cannot — the skyline is yours to help manifest.
layman51 4y ago
I think I count as one of the six. Since I live in an expensive and affluent area, I think I am one of the few people who lives close to where they grew up. In my opinion, moving away gives you more opportunity and life experiences. It is a very US American and “immigrant” thing to do. Personally, I haven’t taken that route because I have no idea what my living situation would be like and I think it would probably be worse for me in terms of psychology and social life.
JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago
I don't think many commenters in this thread realize the minuscule size of a human and how the things which most impact our happiness are located in our close proximity and surroundings. It's almost like a physical law , the weight that something has on our happiness diminishes exponentially with the distance from ourselves. The importance of the setup is constantly underappreciated. Each and everyone of us has 150 people in their circle of acquaintances . And 90% of our happiness depends on the quality of our relationship with the top 10 people in such list. Similarly with the external enviornment. 90% of our happiness depends on the conditions of the external enviornment in a radius of 300 yds. It's very easy to be blinded by the lights of NYC or Hollywood, but those megalopolis are incredibly big and again humans are so small. A good setup in Albuquerque or Salt Lake City beats a mediocre setup in NYC or LA every day of the week. Sure the Empire State Building is nice to look at,but it gets old fast, especially while you see it in passing while on your way to be screamed at by your boss at your second job that you had to take because you can't make the rent. Given how small humans are, the ideal setup can be everywhere except for maybe Somalia or Congo. But even then if you are the undisputed king of Somalia, that's much better than being an Investment Banker in NYC. Despite the fact that a block in NYC generates more GDP than the entire country of Somalia,the claim of the king on such small GDP is almost total, whereas an investment banker has zero claim on the GDP being produced in a block in NYC, he has zero claim on anything period. I think it was Julius Caesar who said: "I would rather be first in a little village than second in Rome".
maurits 4y ago
I'm a child of expats who became an expat. Lived in over a dozen countries. Sometimes I feel like an enlightened citizen moving about. Sometimes I feel like I'm perpetually living in an airport. To quote fight-club, single serving friends and nothing ever stays. Which is to say, i did me, but i don't see anything wrong at all with staying put.
Finnucane 4y ago
I live not far from where I grew up--I moved away and lived in NYC for a while, but eventually came back. I live only about a mile from where my great-grandparents lived when they first came to the US from Romania.
TedShiller 4y ago
Nothing wrong with that, I wish I did too
occamschainsaw 4y ago
I am currently very conflicted about this. I grew up in India but was fortunate to live in the US and now in Europe for undergrad/grad school. I am (slightly) older than the demographic in the article. I am planning on settling down with my girlfriend soon, after I finish some career related stuff. If I want to start a family, I really want to move back to my hometown in India, with the strong social support system. While moving around has been exciting and an eye-opening experience, I am tired of constantly making new friends and leaving them after a few years, and miss my family some times, and eventually the kids would benefit from being around their grandparents. On the other hand, moving back would be career limiting. Does anybody who is further along on the journey have any advice? How did you make this decision?
Hasz 4y ago
While I am not within the 60%, I live about 80km from where I grew up (basically the same metro area), and I feel fortunate enough to not have to move very far for my career. I have only ever worked remote, and truly love where I live. I have traveled to most US states and about a dozen countries, and wouldn't trade my home for any of them. The structural advantages (family, friends, regional knowledge, activities) are tremendous. If you are planning to have children, having parents/relatives around to share in the childcare is an enormous financial advantage.
e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
I'm not familiar with the research in this area, but what exactly separates an adult from a young adult (for the purposes of research on the labour force, not biology), and why study them specifically? 60% of young adults don't move, how does that differ from the rest of the workforce? Retirees?
timerol 4y ago
Good to know my siblings are representative: we're 3 of 5 living within 10 miles of where we grew up. I'm 2000 miles away (other coast), and the youngest sibling is about 500 miles away. This (likely) works even given the 26 years old milestone. I wasn't quite so far away yet, but still a few hundred miles away. The youngest sibling isn't 26 yet, but I don't expect them to move back in time to change the count. I'd like to make bold, sweeping claims about which is better, but I don't have any. I've moved the most, and because of that make the highest salary of any of my siblings. (The other sibling who moved is likely second, but possibly not due to being younger in their career.) Because of my location it's going to be hard to be a good uncle to my first niece, due in January. There are definite trade-offs involved in moving. I moved back in with my parents during the pandemic to provide support for some health issues, since I had the ability work remote easily during that time. It was great to be back local for that time, though there were obviously some confounding factors due to the personal and societal health issues in 2020.
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
I detect a bit of defensiveness in the comments. I also detect a certain egalitarian undertow almost tending toward "everyone should move around" or "no one should move around". There is a third option: some people benefit from moving around. And we may also speak of the social consequences of migration, both for the origin and target societies. I would say this: - Moving around isn't for everyone. - There is a tinge of oikophobia that's common in much of the West today that makes the thought of caring for and willing the genuine good of your own people frightening to many, inconvenient, and for some reason synonymous with chauvinism or some weird exclusivity that construes benevolence as "either/or" instead of in subsidiarian terms. Soon, the mere general prioritization of the good of one's own family members (a duty) will come off as "not inclusive" and "inequitable". - Statistically, there is a certain healthy amount of average migration of certain kinds (the specifics will vary). Some spice enhances the flavor of a soup, but too little leaves it bland, and too much overpowers it. - Travel and living elsewhere can help deprovincialize the mind, but do not guarantee it. - Social networks and social order are important. Note the principle of subsidiary. A human being typically grows up in a family that is itself nwsted within an extended family and a community and so on, like layers of an onion. People typically become alienated when removed from them. - As people get older, it becomes more common to settle down and commit oneself to the good of some particular community (original or adopted) instead of spending one's life drifting anonymously. - One of the big incentives behind traveling or living in different places is to learn about other cultures. But if everyone were moving around, no local culture would ever have the chance to develop because locality requires continuity and a stable, sustaining local population, i.e., a true society. Places with very high rates of inward and outward migration tend to be less distinctive and tend to resemble other hubs of the same kind with which they likely swap inhabitants. If that's what attracts you, then your travelling or moving around isn't motived by a desire to learn about other cultures so much as a desire for a change of scenery while maintaining a more or less consistent, homogenous cultural "experience" globally. It's like being an American who goes on vacation and never talks to the locals, only other Americans in the hotel, or one who wants the "locals" to be like Americans. - There is, of course, a difference between frequent moving and living more than 10 miles away from where you grew up. I attach moral judgement to neither "remaining in the area" nor "living far away" nor even "moving frequently". These are quite personal matters per se.
karaterobot 4y ago
I have nothing to back this up, but it feels like this has probably been the rule for most of human history, and it was just that unusual period in the 20th century where things may have been different for a while. We tend to measure everything against that period, which may someday be recognized as a specific kind of fallacy. Again, I have no data in this case, and am not going to look any up.
mlsu 4y ago
If you say that periods where people move a lot are "mobile" periods, and periods where people stay put a lot are not "mobile" periods, than this is one of the least mobile periods in our modern history, despite what you may believe about remote work and transplants and gentrification. [1] Of course, this is because housing is more expensive than it has ever been. It costs too much damn money to move, even if economic opportunity is better than it used to be. A lot of ink being spilled in this thread about non-mobile people being bitter about the lack of opportunity in their hometown. That may be part of it, but I think the far larger and more important part is that it is too fucking expensive for them to move! In large part because of all of the people who did move away and got their fancy degrees and then financialized the whole economy so badly. [1] https://archive.vn/8ecXR https://archive.vn/8ecXR
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
I grew up about a hour from DC and an hour from Richmond. Had I stayed, I don’t think I would have made it very far as a developer or had the chance to live an interesting life.
aidenn0 4y ago
A friend of mine lives in a town in the Midwest and often wonders why there are so many hardworking people in California struggling to make ends meet when the foundry in his town is looking for anyone who can show up to work on-time and sober, is paying overtime (b/c there aren't enough workers), and is willing to train people. All in a town where you can buy a house for under $200k. People don't move. We like to talk about FOMO, but fear of making major changes is much bigger.
egberts1 4y ago
So glad that my military upbringing has been instilled in all my kids. All of us has been to at least 7 different states/countries, me almost 12! Even "towed" our elders with us, and they love it too. Cannot imagine being in a one-town ... forever. Always seeking different cultures. We must be explorers!
Ekaros 4y ago
So what part of the 6 already live in relatively well performing and populated areas with enough opportunities to stay?

189 points by amyamyamy2 4y ago

60% of young adults live within the metro area they grew up in, at age 26. That's not surprising, especially with how many college graduates move home now. I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial amount of the remainder stay near where they colleged.

emodendroket 4y ago

When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a sign of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so high. I guess not everyone was thinking the same way.

ckosidows 4y ago
Coming from a smaller town (<30,000) I was pretty much taught this. I couldn't go a month without someone wishing I would move away and leave the town behind. I live in a bigger city now and I'm glad but it took effort not to feel ashamed of living in my home town for so long. Most people in America are born and live in metro areas and I wonder if the same kind of mentality is taught to those people?
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I lived in the metro NYC area.
kcb 4y ago
Most Americans live in and around big cities. Ive lived my entire life in commuting distance to Manhattan along with 10s of millions others. There was never any notion from myself or my peers of having to move to "make it". The end goal was always to find a job and get on a bus or train every morning.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  So did I (well if you can tolerate a long commute but many people did it). It's not about chasing opportunities that don't exist, necessarily, but striking out on your own and leaving the familiar.
bradlys 4y ago
> When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a sign of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so high. I guess not everyone was thinking the same way. It’s possible that they just gave up earlier than you did. Many people where I grew up never put any effort into anything because they had resolved themselves to being helpless.

cpsns 4y ago

I fall into this group in Canada and I wish I didn't at this point.

pcthrowaway 4y ago

11% have never travelled outside of the state where they were born, so this doesn't actually surprise me that much.

thepangolino 4y ago

That's a pretty common statistics all around the world. People connect to their the place they grew up in and people they grew up with.

mikrl 4y ago
In my experience, moving is related to aspiration. If I stayed where I grew up I’d honestly likely be an opioid statistic and definitely not doing anything worthwhile with my life. I still keep in touch with a few people from youth who didn’t ruin their lives, and I’m the standout success story despite being the socially awkward and poor one. Moving thousands of miles has changed my life in ways I’d never dream of, staying still was not on the cards: it would have been lethal. I had to upend to get the education I needed, find my person and the tech job I love.
- tricksforfree 4y ago
  Imagine if you and similar, "driven" folk stayed and made where you're from better. Imagine if you started small businesses and hired/trained the locals. Maybe everyone left behind wouldn't have to work at a big box store or just die to reduce the societal burden. Edit: Not blaming, just food for thought.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    A little fantastical to imagine well-meaning people with zero experience of work are going to fix places that nobody else managed to but hope springs eternal, I guess.
  - lukas099 4y ago
    All else equal I would love to live by all my family and friends, but the fact is that my skills are not as useful there as they are where I live now, so I wouldn't be able to provide as much value to the world if I still lived there.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    Trying to jump-start a modern economy in a place that isn't currently participating in one is difficult, like attempting a breakaway in bike racing. It's a worthy public project, but a risky private one.

ifightcrime 4y ago

Makes sense.

irrational 4y ago

That is mind boggling to me. I don't know anyone that lives in the same state they grew up in. I live about 3,000 miles away from where I grew up. I have 7 siblings and none of us live in our home state (and none of us live in the same state as another one - we live in NY, CA, MI, TX, OR, OH, UT, CO - we grew up in FL). Though, I remember that one of my brothers once lived in Pennsylvania and he met 2 women who had never left their county and were amazed that he lived in so many other places and wondered out loud if he had been scared to live in places other than where he lived right then in PA. The mind set that other places are scary to live in is so foreign to me.

HPsquared 4y ago
Probably the "move around a lot" people don't talk much with the "don't move around much" people, and vice-versa.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  When I used to live in Massachusetts I found it boggling how many people had never lived anywhere else. Southern California, where I now live, I think actually has a narrow transplant majority.
  - thebradbain 4y ago
    Which is fascinating, because while we know California is technically net-outward migration (people moving to other states), the demographic of people net MOVING to California is by people in the top 5%. California is essentially gentrifying at the state level with wealthy transplants, pushing working and middle class people who grew up here out of the state. [1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-tax-california-wealthy-20190311-story.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-t...
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      You can't win, huh? Move to California, you're gentrifying it. Move out of California, you're gentrifying wherever you go. Perhaps this framework isn't the best to think about it.

cwmoore 4y ago

; the other four are outnumbered.

perardi 4y ago

We have become an increasingly urbanized country. Lots and lots of people in massive metro areas—think of the hypersprawl around Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, LA… Living 10 miles away from where you grew up around Chicago can put you in a total different socioeconomic level of suburb.

samgranieri 4y ago
As someone who has lived in Chicago and the Chicago suburbs, this is completely true
hnuser847 4y ago
Yep, I live in Chicago and I'm about 10 miles from my parents' house, as the crow flies. I have at various times in my life regretted not moving around and living in different cities, but I didn't feel the urgency to move a thousand miles away from home since I grew up next to one of the largest cities in the US. I imagine that if I had grown up in a small town, like my wife, moving far away from home would have been the only option.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  I grew up in a small town. Lived in and around Chicago for about 10 years as a young adult. Didn't ever like it enough to think that I wanted to put down roots there. Moved back to my hometown and still live there.
- rowanajmarshall 4y ago
  That's what it was for me. I grew up in a tiny farming town; if I wanted a job other than farmhand, retail, or local government, moving was the only option. And I did, 3 days after graduating.
- rhino369 4y ago
  I left Chicagoland and wish I could go back.
  - granshaw 4y ago

fdsfdxfvcx 4y ago

i had the best of both worlds. moved from my hometown to seattle for while, made a lot of money in tech, bought and sold a house in seattle at the right time, moved back to my hometown. now i have a paid off house 5 mins from the house i lived in during high school. i was able to keep the seattle salary so now i am living like a king in my old hometown, honestly its amazing

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago

I've regularly read that most people in the world live and die within 50 miles of where they were born. Even now that travel is so common.

kube-system 4y ago
Travel is common for the top 10-20% richest people in the world. For 80% of the world, travel is something that 'other people' do.

rr888 4y ago

I'm just amazed in my new job I actually have an American in my team.

rr888 4y ago
Actually after being away from home for 20 years I'd love to go back but wife and kids prefer staying :(.
- granshaw 4y ago
  Same sometimes I dream of working remotely and taking my USD savings and enjoying the luxe life back in SE Asia

saraton1n 4y ago

I was a military child, and so I moved around my whole life. My best friend has lived their whole life in the city I live in now. Sometimes I get a little jealous because I don't have any heart-connection to any place. Most of the friends I regularly talk to are people I've met within the last 5 years, and I still don't have any still-standing friendships from the time before my dad retired. But also, I cannot imagine that life, nor do I know if I really want to. Moving around so much gave me such a wide array of interests and cultural knowledge about places in and outside of the US. I think the benefits of that well-rounded background outweigh whatever pangs of sadness I get occasionally about not really feeling like I have a homeland.

fdsfdxfvcx 4y ago
had that too, the place my dad retired to became my "hometown" having said that, as i got older and started having kids, i did move back to that hometown. i honestly did enjoy moving every 1-3 years as a kid, but my wife had a similar experience and did not enjoy it. now my kids have a home town and can see both sets of their grandparents every week or so. its also pretty cool taking my kids to the same restaurants and places that i went to when i was younger. based on how much trouble my 5 year old had with this move its not something i want to subject them to any more times(shes happy about it now and we wanted to get it over with before kindergarden etc starts). people like us who had a positive outcome from moving constantly are the outliers i think, its better to give the kids a sense of continuity.
- saraton1n 4y ago
  Yea, my brother has wholly set his roots down there, and so I know my family will be settling here somewhat permanently, which is odd to me because I know this isn't the place for me. But, my brother has a kid and I'm much less likely to, so it makes sense my parents want to remain close. I think I'd want to raise the kid with a sense of continuity, but also travel a lot. maybe even move to another country for a bit before returning back to the place i'd picked to raise them. who knows?
aaronax 4y ago
What are the concrete benefits of such a well-rounded background?

user3939382 4y ago

All IMHO of course: we'd be better off if it was 9 of 10. The family is the most important institution we have, it is the backbone driving the most valuable members of our society. The stronger and more cohesive it is the better. There's a countervailing factor which is that more earnings and economic output arise from jobs in urban areas, which historically can only happen if some members relocate. Hopefully the trend towards remote work helps alleviate this conflict.

babelfish 4y ago
[Citation required] for almost every sentence in your post - most importantly "it is the backbone driving the most valuable members of our society". What a ridiculous assertion.
- user3939382 4y ago
  I guess you missed the first two words of my comment.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- rayiner 4y ago
  Given that virtually every human is raised in a family, I think you’re the one that needs to prove your outrageous statement to the contrary.
- tsol 4y ago
  It's not that crazy. Even economically, the people that are gonna support us when we are old and senile are currently being reared as part of families
- grumple 4y ago
  It's easy to verify that married people make more money than unmarried people: https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/married-wage-gap/#:~:text=That%20married%20people%20make%20more,to%20be%20greater%20for%20men https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/married-wage-gap/#:~:text=.... It's easily verified by data you can find in many studies, and presumably the census itself. Of course it doesn't technically prove causality - it could be that the type of people who are successful just happen to be the same type of people who get married. Or maybe they get married precisely because they are successful - or unsuccessful people have a harder time finding spouses.

fullshark 4y ago

A lot of upperwardly mobile, ambitious people don't realize this, or they generally understand it only in terms of chastising their high school peers who stayed home. If you build a society based on the assumption everyone will simply move and re-skill to the regions with economic opportunity, you get a lot of regions of bitter people who stayed behind somewhere and watched their local economy get destroyed by trade deals and technological advances, and that's how you get an anti-globalization populist political movement.

theGnuMe 4y ago
You also have the issue of people who move to high cost locales, raise kids and then their kids who especially can't afford it move away (or wait to inherit the house from you).
Fauntleroy 4y ago
I'm one of the "upwardly mobile" folks who moved out, and I'm a bit shocked at all the comments here treating the headline like it's a bad thing. Having a local and consistent community is an essential part of a "good" city. I know that many of the places we moved away from were... lacking, but simply abandoning everything isn't going to help at all either.
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  I have moved quite a bit myself and honestly still miss 'home'. Hopefully soon I'll stay somewhere for the rest of my life, or a good chunk of it, so I can be 'home' again. My wifes a researcher and we follow the academic positions so I probably have another 3 or 4 locations to live in first (: There are a lot of perks of having that stable community feeling around you.
parker_mountain 4y ago
Part of it, as well, is that a lot of these regions that people moved out of are the suburbs. Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading.
- 4y ago

jchanimal 4y ago

I wish the data explorer also showed per-capita moving rates. It's hard to tell if a place is sending proportionately more migrants to another place or if the source just starts with a high population.

atlgator 4y ago

If I had become a doctor or a hotelier I definitely would've stayed in my home town. I miss it greatly, but there's zero tech presence and remote jobs seem to be drying up.

dibt 4y ago
> If I had become a doctor or a hotelier I definitely would've stayed in my home town. According to the study, you would likely have not stayed: "By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in affluent families." A low-income family is less likely to send their kid to school to be a doctor or hotelier.

amelius 4y ago

America, land of the free ... well perhaps not.

nerdjon 4y ago

This just seems insane to me. I purposefully graduated early from highschool (1 semester less and it only worked because of where my birthday was) to move 853 miles from where I grew up to where I currently live. My partner did a similar move (before we met). When I talk to most of my friends it is a similar story. I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious reasons). Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south (as are many of my friends), I also wanted to move to an urban city like so many in my generation. This just seems insane for me to think about.

why5s 4y ago
> I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious reasons). We want to. But between housing prices and student loans, we can't afford to.
paulcole 4y ago
It seems insane to me to think about taking to my parents weekly. I know they exist, I don’t need to talk to them. What seems unimaginable to one of us is not just normal but desirable to the other. The same is true for deciding where to live.
- nerdjon 4y ago
  Just to clarify, what I find insane is the numbers because it doesn't line up with my experience within most of the people I generally talk too
- brewdad 4y ago
  I'm in the same boat. Sometimes I wonder if there is something wrong with the way I'm wired but while I love my Dad and we've always had a good relationship, I don't need to talk to him regularly. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with the strong family bonds that so many in this thread have. We lived 2.5 hours away from my Dad's family and saw them about 6 times a year. We lived 1500 miles from my Mom's family and I probably visited my Mom's parents a dozen times in my entire life. Now, my wife and I live 2500 miles from our parents. Half the year it's further than that since one set winters in Florida and the other in Asia. At times I feel like I've totally missed out on something but at the same time I wouldn't move back "home" probably ever. I've lived in my current house for 18 years. It's the longest I've ever lived anywhere. This is "home" now.

insane_dreamer 4y ago

Wow, I really did not expect it to be that high. I could understand that number if it was "live in the state where they grew up" (esp. if they went to college in-state which most do), but within 10 miles? That's a pretty small radius. In many cities you could move to the other side of town and be outside the 10 mile range.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

I would say that I owe my career to not staying in my home town or even my home state. The state has plenty of charms but opportunity is generally speaking not among them. Those of my graduating high school class who I've followed since also moved out of state. Looking at the data from this tool it seems we were outliers, though. With remote work being more common now I could probably move back, but that would carry some amount of risk as long as I'm working for another company rather than running a business of my own. Where I live now has a decent balance between locally available jobs and cost of living which is a bit scary to give up.

theonemind 4y ago

It's really too bad that people have to move around for economic and other opportunity. It kind of speaks to the damaged modern psyche with illnesses like schizophrenia virtually absent in the ancient world that anyone would regard not dispersing from their home area as a bad thing. Like, we all just aspire to the condition of the multi-national economic elite, paying allegiance to no country or place, making an abode of bouncing around a few world cities. Like, maybe we just shouldn't have crappy places that people need to flee, by putting roots in the community and making it a place to be.

dibt 4y ago
> It's really too bad that people have to move around for economic and other opportunity. The article doesn't support your bias. It's mostly those from affluent families that move farther from home, not people looking for work. "By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in affluent families."

aftbit 4y ago

I moved away from home but I moved back as well. I now live within 10 miles of where I grew up, but I spent 7 years in the sf bay area, 2000 miles away.

cletus 4y ago

So my family has long described ourselves as nomadic. We just seem to get the wanderlust and want to pick up and move after some years in some place. I myself have lived in 5 different countries so far. My great-grandfather (who died long before I was born) was a fairly extreme example of this. Shortly before WWI he decided to jump on a boat in Germany and immigrate to Australia (coming originally from the Baltic states). It seems like a fortuitous time to leave Europe. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. His brother did basically the same thing (although in his case he was partly motivated by escaping getting conscripted into the Army). His story is fascinating too. A book was even written about it. He actually found an abandoned boat, fixed it up, made his own instruments and sailed to America in the 1930s across the Pacific Ocean because he always wanted to visit America. I think about that and wonder what is it about some people who seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to staying pretty much exactly where they were born. I don't really understand that mindset but in some ways I envy it. One of the most culturally identifiable songs to Australians is a song from the 1970s called Khe Sanh by a band named Cold Chisel. It's quite literally about a Vietnam vet with PTSD. it has a verse that goes like this: And I've traveled 'round the world from year to year And each one found me aimless, one more year the worse for wear And I've been back to Southeast Asia, and the answer sure ain't there But I'm drifting north, to check things out again, yes, I am I think about that too.

canniballectern 4y ago
> what is it about some people who seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to staying pretty much exactly where they were born IMO the main factors would be your economic situation and your relationship with your family. People with little money and tight family ties probably wouldn't be keen to move very far, whereas someone with a bad or indifferent relationship to family and the means to head elsewhere would probably do so.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  I feel like relationship to family isn't as big of a limiter these days. I'm pretty close with my family and do miss them (they being on the other side of the world), but being able to video call them essentially whenever our waking times line up takes care of a lot of the issues. As a result of which I can still share any problems I have and get advice or similarly help them in dealing with their problems. The few years my siblings spent half the world away from us prior to the proliferation of smartphones (and thus the ability for video calls to just happen whenever instead of being specifically organized) did seem to strongly weaken their relationship with the rest of the family though. They seemed to feel abandoned due to essentially having to grow up on their own (ie finish up college and start working) due to not being able to as easily share their issues.

keewee7 4y ago

Ten miles is huge in an increasingly urbanized world. Within a ten miles radius from where I lived in 2017 there was some of the most expensive housing in the world and ghettos with weekly gang shootings. However the city I lived in is objectively regarded as one of the best places to live in the world: Copenhagen, Denmark.

chrisco255 4y ago
Ten miles might make a difference in housing or neighborhood quality, but makes little difference in access to job opportunities, higher education, social activities, etc. Especially if one owns a car, as most Americans do.

dibt 4y ago

This is is an important detail missing from the title: "Childhood locations are measured at age 16 and locations in young adulthood are measured at age 26." "By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in affluent families." It's not all young adults, just a specific demographic we would expect to move away farther from home. Many people in this thread are using this to confirm their bias that it says something about the young adults. The title is doing more harm than good.

crooked-v 4y ago

I'd be interested to see this data weighted against population density. As-is, I suspect it's massively tilted by how in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, or NYC you can go 5 miles and practically be in a different country.

Yhippa 4y ago

I moved from where I grew up. The biggest advantage is access to better career paths and potential with my career. If I get laid off, there are more diverse work options, unlike where I grew up. The flip side is that being able to have family help out easily when our kid is sick. Also I have friends who stayed back home (the ratio matching this article title pretty closely) and they have barbecues together, can hang out on a random night around a fire pit, watch movies in their backyard, and other fun things. About planting roots and settling down. I'm really torn about these two ways of going about it. There's something very comforting about setting down roots and having a solid network of friends and family. The flip side is that you're probably leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. The history of success in America seems to lean towards being nomadic.

chrisco255 4y ago
I feel like with remote work, it's possible to have your cake and eat it, too. Depends on your career, but at least in software, it no longer feels like you have to move to a tech hub to make it, for example.
siquick 4y ago
Depends on your definition of success? I moved to the other side of the world from where I grew up in my early 30s, and I grew up at the other end of the country from where I was born and lived my early years. I have a great group of mates I met in my early twenties and still speak with daily on WhatsApp. As you say they meet up regularly, know each others families well, and they have not left their home area and have been friends since primary school. They’re all jealous that I have lived an “adventurous and exciting” life and I’m jealous that they have amazingly solid roots.
- dorchadas 4y ago
  I'm in pretty much this exact situation right now (we actually all left then returned in early/mid 20s after university), and, well, it's still lonely. WhatsApp (or, in our case, Discord) is no substitution for physically being able to meet up. I have friends where I live now, but it's not the same level of depth in the friendship, where we'd just go to each other's houses and shoot the shit for hours about everything and nothing (as we've done since high school) and I feel that is something I didn't realise I wanted and was missing until I moved. It's actually got me seriously reconsidering returning. Gonna be hard leaving after Christmas this year.

cassonmars 4y ago

I moved away from my Midwest hometown in my early twenties, lived in Seattle for nearly a decade, then got fed up with the path the city was on and moved back. I feel like moving away is valuable, and teaches you to appreciate the things you took for granted living somewhere during your childhood. Now that I’m back, I get to help fundamentally transform the city into a new tech hub, reviving from the state of decay produced by an industry that mostly abandoned it. This has been extremely fulfilling in a way that living in an already established big city cannot — the skyline is yours to help manifest.

layman51 4y ago

I think I count as one of the six. Since I live in an expensive and affluent area, I think I am one of the few people who lives close to where they grew up. In my opinion, moving away gives you more opportunity and life experiences. It is a very US American and “immigrant” thing to do. Personally, I haven’t taken that route because I have no idea what my living situation would be like and I think it would probably be worse for me in terms of psychology and social life.

JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago

I don't think many commenters in this thread realize the minuscule size of a human and how the things which most impact our happiness are located in our close proximity and surroundings. It's almost like a physical law , the weight that something has on our happiness diminishes exponentially with the distance from ourselves. The importance of the setup is constantly underappreciated. Each and everyone of us has 150 people in their circle of acquaintances . And 90% of our happiness depends on the quality of our relationship with the top 10 people in such list. Similarly with the external enviornment. 90% of our happiness depends on the conditions of the external enviornment in a radius of 300 yds. It's very easy to be blinded by the lights of NYC or Hollywood, but those megalopolis are incredibly big and again humans are so small. A good setup in Albuquerque or Salt Lake City beats a mediocre setup in NYC or LA every day of the week. Sure the Empire State Building is nice to look at,but it gets old fast, especially while you see it in passing while on your way to be screamed at by your boss at your second job that you had to take because you can't make the rent. Given how small humans are, the ideal setup can be everywhere except for maybe Somalia or Congo. But even then if you are the undisputed king of Somalia, that's much better than being an Investment Banker in NYC. Despite the fact that a block in NYC generates more GDP than the entire country of Somalia,the claim of the king on such small GDP is almost total, whereas an investment banker has zero claim on the GDP being produced in a block in NYC, he has zero claim on anything period. I think it was Julius Caesar who said: "I would rather be first in a little village than second in Rome".

maurits 4y ago

I'm a child of expats who became an expat. Lived in over a dozen countries. Sometimes I feel like an enlightened citizen moving about. Sometimes I feel like I'm perpetually living in an airport. To quote fight-club, single serving friends and nothing ever stays. Which is to say, i did me, but i don't see anything wrong at all with staying put.

Finnucane 4y ago

I live not far from where I grew up--I moved away and lived in NYC for a while, but eventually came back. I live only about a mile from where my great-grandparents lived when they first came to the US from Romania.

TedShiller 4y ago

Nothing wrong with that, I wish I did too

occamschainsaw 4y ago

I am currently very conflicted about this. I grew up in India but was fortunate to live in the US and now in Europe for undergrad/grad school. I am (slightly) older than the demographic in the article. I am planning on settling down with my girlfriend soon, after I finish some career related stuff. If I want to start a family, I really want to move back to my hometown in India, with the strong social support system. While moving around has been exciting and an eye-opening experience, I am tired of constantly making new friends and leaving them after a few years, and miss my family some times, and eventually the kids would benefit from being around their grandparents. On the other hand, moving back would be career limiting. Does anybody who is further along on the journey have any advice? How did you make this decision?

Hasz 4y ago

While I am not within the 60%, I live about 80km from where I grew up (basically the same metro area), and I feel fortunate enough to not have to move very far for my career. I have only ever worked remote, and truly love where I live. I have traveled to most US states and about a dozen countries, and wouldn't trade my home for any of them. The structural advantages (family, friends, regional knowledge, activities) are tremendous. If you are planning to have children, having parents/relatives around to share in the childcare is an enormous financial advantage.

e63f67dd-065b 4y ago

I'm not familiar with the research in this area, but what exactly separates an adult from a young adult (for the purposes of research on the labour force, not biology), and why study them specifically? 60% of young adults don't move, how does that differ from the rest of the workforce? Retirees?

timerol 4y ago

Good to know my siblings are representative: we're 3 of 5 living within 10 miles of where we grew up. I'm 2000 miles away (other coast), and the youngest sibling is about 500 miles away. This (likely) works even given the 26 years old milestone. I wasn't quite so far away yet, but still a few hundred miles away. The youngest sibling isn't 26 yet, but I don't expect them to move back in time to change the count. I'd like to make bold, sweeping claims about which is better, but I don't have any. I've moved the most, and because of that make the highest salary of any of my siblings. (The other sibling who moved is likely second, but possibly not due to being younger in their career.) Because of my location it's going to be hard to be a good uncle to my first niece, due in January. There are definite trade-offs involved in moving. I moved back in with my parents during the pandemic to provide support for some health issues, since I had the ability work remote easily during that time. It was great to be back local for that time, though there were obviously some confounding factors due to the personal and societal health issues in 2020.

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

I detect a bit of defensiveness in the comments. I also detect a certain egalitarian undertow almost tending toward "everyone should move around" or "no one should move around". There is a third option: some people benefit from moving around. And we may also speak of the social consequences of migration, both for the origin and target societies. I would say this: - Moving around isn't for everyone. - There is a tinge of oikophobia that's common in much of the West today that makes the thought of caring for and willing the genuine good of your own people frightening to many, inconvenient, and for some reason synonymous with chauvinism or some weird exclusivity that construes benevolence as "either/or" instead of in subsidiarian terms. Soon, the mere general prioritization of the good of one's own family members (a duty) will come off as "not inclusive" and "inequitable". - Statistically, there is a certain healthy amount of average migration of certain kinds (the specifics will vary). Some spice enhances the flavor of a soup, but too little leaves it bland, and too much overpowers it. - Travel and living elsewhere can help deprovincialize the mind, but do not guarantee it. - Social networks and social order are important. Note the principle of subsidiary. A human being typically grows up in a family that is itself nwsted within an extended family and a community and so on, like layers of an onion. People typically become alienated when removed from them. - As people get older, it becomes more common to settle down and commit oneself to the good of some particular community (original or adopted) instead of spending one's life drifting anonymously. - One of the big incentives behind traveling or living in different places is to learn about other cultures. But if everyone were moving around, no local culture would ever have the chance to develop because locality requires continuity and a stable, sustaining local population, i.e., a true society. Places with very high rates of inward and outward migration tend to be less distinctive and tend to resemble other hubs of the same kind with which they likely swap inhabitants. If that's what attracts you, then your travelling or moving around isn't motived by a desire to learn about other cultures so much as a desire for a change of scenery while maintaining a more or less consistent, homogenous cultural "experience" globally. It's like being an American who goes on vacation and never talks to the locals, only other Americans in the hotel, or one who wants the "locals" to be like Americans. - There is, of course, a difference between frequent moving and living more than 10 miles away from where you grew up. I attach moral judgement to neither "remaining in the area" nor "living far away" nor even "moving frequently". These are quite personal matters per se.

karaterobot 4y ago

I have nothing to back this up, but it feels like this has probably been the rule for most of human history, and it was just that unusual period in the 20th century where things may have been different for a while. We tend to measure everything against that period, which may someday be recognized as a specific kind of fallacy. Again, I have no data in this case, and am not going to look any up.

mlsu 4y ago

If you say that periods where people move a lot are "mobile" periods, and periods where people stay put a lot are not "mobile" periods, than this is one of the least mobile periods in our modern history, despite what you may believe about remote work and transplants and gentrification. [1] Of course, this is because housing is more expensive than it has ever been. It costs too much damn money to move, even if economic opportunity is better than it used to be. A lot of ink being spilled in this thread about non-mobile people being bitter about the lack of opportunity in their hometown. That may be part of it, but I think the far larger and more important part is that it is too fucking expensive for them to move! In large part because of all of the people who did move away and got their fancy degrees and then financialized the whole economy so badly. [1] https://archive.vn/8ecXR https://archive.vn/8ecXR

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

I grew up about a hour from DC and an hour from Richmond. Had I stayed, I don’t think I would have made it very far as a developer or had the chance to live an interesting life.

aidenn0 4y ago

A friend of mine lives in a town in the Midwest and often wonders why there are so many hardworking people in California struggling to make ends meet when the foundry in his town is looking for anyone who can show up to work on-time and sober, is paying overtime (b/c there aren't enough workers), and is willing to train people. All in a town where you can buy a house for under $200k. People don't move. We like to talk about FOMO, but fear of making major changes is much bigger.

egberts1 4y ago

So glad that my military upbringing has been instilled in all my kids. All of us has been to at least 7 different states/countries, me almost 12! Even "towed" our elders with us, and they love it too. Cannot imagine being in a one-town ... forever. Always seeking different cultures. We must be explorers!

Ekaros 4y ago

So what part of the 6 already live in relatively well performing and populated areas with enough opportunities to stay?