Retrospective and subsequent metropolitan residential mobility

Abstract

The focus of United States residential mobility research on either past or future moves has hindered an integration of demographic and social psychological perspectives of the type that have been used in the study of human fertility. This paper combines retrospective and subsequent mobility data obtained from a Los Angeles area probability sample to demonstrate that a past mobility-choice, plan-actualization sequence is congruent with subsequent moves. First, comparisons are made of mobility plans and choices with subsequent mobility, controlling for life cycle stages. Second, mobility plan, choice, and subsequent behavior are used to construct a typology of "movers" and "stayers" defined in terms of mobility anticipation, fulfillment, and behavior. Third, past moves are compared with plan and choice, which are then contrasted with subsequent mobility. Past mobility, plan, choice, and the life cycle account for approximately 80 percent of the possible subsequent mobility-rate variation for the Los Angeles metropolis. For the time period and indexes, the greatest relative contributions to subsequent mobility rates are made by plan and choice, but striking rate differences are observed when past behavior is taken into account. Mobility experiences lead to a likelihood of a plan and choice to move, and increase possibilities of realizing these goals. An analogy with fertility research suggests that future studies of residential mobility need to incorporate social psychological concepts with the current focus on migration histories, Markov chains, cohort analyses, migration expectancy tables, and techniques of linking populations over time. Demographers must extend both their theoretical and statistical apparatus in order fully to account for residence changes. Such research should indicate more clearly how actualizing plans or choices leads populations into different mobility or stability channels. © 1968 Population Association of America.