The Rev. Greg Morgan offers one in a series of articles on contemporary trends in America for people of faith.
MOVING ON: The Decline of Geographic Mobility in America and Its Costs
Over the course of my lifetime, I have moved no fewer than 12 times and have lived in at least 14 states and one foreign country. However, I’ve never given it much thought because I’ve known so many other people who were at least as geographically mobile as my family and I have been. We took it for granted because we lived in an age of great opportunity (I was born during WWII), much of which was available to us due to personal circumstance: a certain moment in time, a certain amount of income, a certain social class, a certain family, or perhaps just a serious case of the American propensity to change locations periodically as a matter of no particular note. In fact, prominent visitors to the United States over a long period of time have noted the peculiar American habit of moving on a regular basis, a characteristic unknown in the Old World left behind in relocating here. But now I learn that the great age of personal and family mobility is coming to an end with serious consequences for the nation (see Yoni Appelbaum, Deputy Executive Editor, The Atlantic, Feb. 10, 2025, “How Progressives Froze the American Dream,” which I am summarizing/condensing here for the benefit of our readers).
This has been astonishing news to me, because I simply assumed we would go on pursuing our national habit of moving periodically in search of the American Dream in perpetuity. This practice of moving to new places “with unprecedented frequency” seems to be unique to America; here, “if you don’t like your lot in life” and can reinvent yourself by relocating, you just rent a truck and go —- which is unheard of in most other parts of the world. In the past, it was actually “the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity.” Perhaps I knew this on some level but simply didn’t acknowledge it in quite that way. In retrospect, however, I can certainly see that the degree of geographic mobility in this country is probably limited to our specific location for a host of reasons. Nonetheless, to recognize that a key propensity or habit of a great nation is currently in steep decline is alarming. As Appelbaum puts it, the “sharp drop in geographic mobility is (in reality) the single most important social change of the past half century.”
If you think about it for a moment, you’ll recognize that this engine of economic growth and social change could not recede without leaving some kind of important consequence in its wake. And perhaps the best way of seeing this is to look at the recent election of Donald Trump to the Presidency and its accompanying very radical changes to our national life which have seemed to come out of nowhere. We have been caught off-guard by this development because we haven’t been paying attention to the monumental changes which have been taking place in our country over recent decades. The reality is that Trump “tapped into the anger, frustration, and alienation” that have characterized the bulk of those who voted for him. We need to examine this, because it goes to the very heart of our current state of alarm. We can illustrate the extent of these changes by considering the following: “among white voters who had moved more than two hours from their hometown, Hillary Clinton enjoyed a six-point lead in the presidential race of 2016.” By contrast, “those living within a two-hour drive backed Trump by a remarkable 26 points in 2024.” This will no doubt surprise many people, but the reality is that today “many Americans are stranded in communities with flat or declining prospects and lack the practical ability to move across the tracks, the state, or the country — to choose where they want to live.” Which takes us right back to that receding reality of the annual moves which have long characterized life in America.
And, in turn, that leads us to Appelbaum’s overall thesis: that this narrowing of opportunity for many Americans is actually due to the work of progressive citizens who claim to believe in inclusion, diversity, and social equality but in fact stand in the way of achieving these goals because they are directly involved in narrowing opportunities for Americans seeking reasonably priced housing in our major urban centers where opportunities abound. The availability of affordable housing which would make it possible for them to escape their lives in more restrictive environments is in retreat. But, to repeat Appelbaum’s message, it is — surprisingly — actually the bluest of liberals among us who are actually impeding the opening up of opportunities to our fellow citizens in the critical arena of housing. This can only result in increasing resentment with its critical implications for our ability to address growing problems in the larger culture in a collective way. This may be less a conscious development than the result of an intense focus on ourselves (i.e. all of us) and our needs which conflicts with the interests of our fellow neighbors; selfishness is of course a human characteristic native to us all. I recognize this problem because when I lived in a very tony neighborhood in N.W. Washington, D.C. for nearly a decade in the 1980s, I was astonished to discover that my natural compatriots (liberal Democrats) could become the meanest snakes you’d ever encounter if you took a position which threatened the value of their real estate.
To amplify this analysis of the sources of the housing shortage we’re currently confronting, Appelbaum provides a wonderful case study in political action by organized and informed groups of progressives: Jane and Robert Jacobs (she was the famous urban planner and author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a classic text which took aim at urban renewal, and Robt. was an accomplished architect in the city). In 1947, they bought a house on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village for $7,000; it is today estimated to be worth $6.6 million (a price which currently would result in monthly payments of 90 times what the original renters had been paying in 1947 when the property was transferred even if one could scrape together a qualifying down payment in today’s economy). When Jacobs learned that the city planned to designate her own neighborhood for urban renewal, she and her husband balked. Despite Jane’s reputation for breathing life into aging cities, when it came right down to it, she and her husband couldn’t bear the thought of their neighborhood changing in any visible way. As a result of their effort to organize the neighbors in opposition to this plan, the Village was spared. The problem was that their efforts, widely imitated, ultimately extended to all parts of the city (zoning restrictions, historic preservation statutes, overzealous building codes) which resulted in the hollowing out of its most desirable neighborhoods while making NYC housing unaffordable to any but the wealthiest of buyers.
What is getting lost in the decline in geographic mobility is a distinguishing feature of what life came to be in the New World. As people moved to North America in the 17th century to build a new civilization, they left their previous assumptions behind (very old, time-tested, tradition-bound European attitudes that regarded outsiders with suspicion and hostility and limited mobility). The Massachusetts Bay colony began the process by establishing the right to leave it (codified in writing as a fundamental right). When settlers began moving west in the 19th century, communities competed for residents by establishing the right to arrive and stay, a welcoming signal to newcomers). Although there were exceptions (such as restrictions on the rights of Chinese workers, women, former slaves, etc.) mobility became “a deeply ingrained habit” for most Americans. As that mobility recedes in our own time, we are paying a high price. It is estimated that the decline in mobility is costing the American economy nearly $2 trillion in lost productivity every year. In personal terms, which are harder to quantify, when mobility declines, so does optimism, a greater sense of purpose, and increased self-respect. These are replaced by cynicism and resentment which are toxic for the larger community. If geographic mobility brings about one critical accomplishment in general terms it is most likely the prevention of stagnation which impedes growth and vitality.
A number of forces have been at work to undermine geographic mobility in our time. First, of course, it’s important to point out that people are most mobile when they are young. As our population ages, so does mobility, and we are aging rapidly: the median American was 16 in 1800, 28 in 1970 and is 39 today. It may be that two-career households have made mobility less possible. Joint custody makes it harder for some families to relocate. More Americans own their own homes today, and it’s the renters who’ve been the most mobile segment of the population. But none of these fully account for the steep decline in mobility, so we need to look elsewhere for an answer. And we find a part of it in the rise of zoning in urban areas. Once people discovered that this helped segregate land by size and use, they found they could divide up populations by race, ethnicity, and income. NYC first adopted it in part to push Jewish garment workers down Fifth Avenue and back to the Lower East Side. New Deal initiatives limited federal loans to the jurisdictions that had the right zoning rules and racially restrictive covenants. Additionally, in the modern period, government has taken a more active role: putting up any kind of housing now requires the approval of official agencies. As a result, we are seeing the beginning of opposition to rules imposed by environmental concerns or the requirements for historic preservation, but the overall trends appear to be difficult to change; Americans, for example, continue to move to red states from blue ones primarily because restrictions of this kind are scarcer in the regions to which one finds people moving today.
Parents should appreciate the fact that there is nothing more important in rearing children than the location of their housing. It is the single most important decision one can make about their future. The prospects for success in life will decline in areas with fewer opportunities including fewer housing options for those who do not meet financial requirements for mortgages in high-end housing markets. And progressivism has produced an attitude of exclusiveness which is often expressed in popular demonstrations against locating undesirable activities or people in certain neighborhoods where the residents are used to organizing to get what they want. This is frequently referred to as NIMBYism (“not in my backyard thinking”).
Last year, the Census Bureau reported that we have set a new record: the %age of Americans who moved in the previous year has reached an all-time low. This is critically important because geographic inequality is growing; in fact, the gap between richer and poorer parts of the country has reached an all-time high, and the political consequences are there for anyone to recognize. This is a national crisis, but we do not appear to have the political will to reverse it. One significant result has been lost productivity. For example, the experts tell us that in a world of perfect mobility (as expressed in statistics for our most productive regions: NYC, San Francisco, and San Jose, for example) in which we had constructed adequate housing to accommodate our overall population between 1964 and 2009, our Gross National Product (the $ value of everything we produced in a year’s time) would have grown by $2 trillion (or $8775 per American worker). And we all know what the political cost has been: the current divisions in our nation which make effective government increasingly difficult. Yet our most productive, richest urban areas continue to wall themselves off into affluent areas unreachable by those whose incomes are lagging. In Manhattan, for example, 27% of all lots are now in historic districts. In Washington, DC, rich areas of the city have stopped the construction of apartment buildings by designating existing and very ordinary grocery and drug stores as worthy of historic preservation simply to wall themselves off from the rest of the city in exclusive districts. Other cities are restricting residential areas to the construction of single-family homes.
If we are really interested in restoring mobility and bringing about greater opportunities to ease our growing inequality, we need to follow three principles: (1) consistency (rules applying uniformly); (2) tolerance (accepting the tastes and preferences of people unlike us); and (3) abundance (real choices for people with lesser material wealth in close proximity to us in truly desirable locations). That’s a tall order given current attitudes and values. However, the alternative to having a plan and really working to achieve it is not pleasant to contemplate.
Greg+