One pattern Tyler Cowen observes in The Complacent Class is the growing reluctance of Americans to switch jobs and move to another state.
A common response is that poor people don't have the financial means to move, even if it means a better job. I'm not sure I entirely buy that. At the very least, it's only telling part of the story.
So what is keeping low-wage workers in low-productivity towns?
Personally, the number one reason I don't move is that my family is here and I don't like meeting new people. I have a very narrow window for people I'm not related to that I actually like spending time with. But if I knew MY TYPE OF PEOPLE would be in a new community where I have a job opportunity, I might consider moving.
That is why I wonder how much the decline of attendance in national institutions have had on geographic mobility. There has been a rise in independent protestant and Evangelical churches over the past 30 years and a commensurate decline in Catholic, Episcopal, Southern Baptist and United Methodist churches.
The advantage of having a national brand of religion is that you can be sure a community of like-minded believers will be waiting for you when you move to a new area. The same goes for Rotary International or any other civic organization.
When institutions are localized, it stymies the incentive to move somewhere different where you might not feel welcomed. Having a social infrastructure in place, where you already have some type of membership, at least gets you a foot in the door.
If family is what keeps me rooted, community is what can lure me away. A national network of ideologically-driven colleges and universities might be able to Make America Mobile Again.
This article traces it a little better and finds a similar conclusion.
A lot of really interesting ideas here Doug. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteDo you know what Cowen uses for data sources on internal migration in the U.S.? I wonder if the data was separated out by different factors if you'd find some more nuanced trends. For example, there is a New Great Migration of African-Americans to the South that has been going on for a little while. I'm not sure if this cuts across wealth, or if this is concentrated along economic lines.
Also, from my work on refugees I know that there is sometimes a second migration among refugee populations after resettlement. Refugees may initially be resettled in one area when they first come to the U.S., but sometimes will follow the idea that you suggest and will move to locations that have more of a community with houses of worship, organizations, grocery stores, and businesses built & run by their community. Of course, this is a small percent of the total U.S. population so it won't show up in the overall data. Anyway, I'd bet there are more stories to tell looking deeper into the data.
Maybe it isn't fair to compare our current internal migration to the past. And, not all of our past internal migration trends should be celebrated. Some of the factors that drove internal migration in the U.S. over our history just aren’t present any more, and many for the better: western expansion and war leading to some internal migration by choice and some by force, boom-bust natural resource extraction (maybe the only recent example of significant migration being for North Dakota oil), the ecological collapse of the Dust Bowl and the out-migration that followed, and the Great Migration’s origin in slavery are a few.
There’s a chance that one day, we may see internal migration patterns that are not driven by the economy, but by climate. If climate science proves correct, and if we don’t do anything about it, then I think we are likely to see climate-related internal migration in the U.S. Some areas of the country simply won’t be habitable, or pleasant to inhabit, with heat, flooding, lack of drinking water, or difficulties in food production. I wonder when rich folks in places like Houston will start buying land in rural areas of the Pacific Northwest, northern Minnesota, or Upper Peninsula of Michigan so that their grandkids can have a better place to live. 538 has some good links on this at https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-the-best-place-to-move-if-youre-worried-about-climate-change/ . Note: the 538 piece also links to a 2011 study that I’m guessing led to additional research that can tell us even more on internal migration in the U.S., but I’m being lazy https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.25.3.173
"Do you know what Cowen uses for data sources on internal migration in the U.S.?"
DeleteI read the book a year ago so I don't remember. This article traces it a little better and finds a similar conclusion to me. https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/05/moving-location-new-city-how-much-cost-mobile-rooted-stuck/590521/
"Some of the factors that drove internal migration in the U.S. over our history just aren’t present any more, and many for the better..."
Don't you feel that the trade off of globalization and creative destruction is that the net benefit in jobs goes to a few really productive cities and the net loss comes at the expense of rural communities. And it seems that people are less likely to move to these productive cities than they were in the past.
The Brookings report shows that big cities are losing too - New York, LA, Chicago, and Houston. The four largest cities in the country. It's not just a rural-urban divide.
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ReplyDeleteMaybe we should look at examples from other similar post-industrial, service sector-led economies.
Going back to the internal migration that we do see in the U.S. today, there’s also this Brookings report, released this week, which is gaining a lot of media attention: https://www.brookings.edu/research/growth-centers-how-to-spread-tech-innovation-across-america/ . One stat from the report that stands out is that “five top innovation metro areas—Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and San Diego—accounted for more than 90% of the nation’s innovation-sector growth during the years 2005 to 2017.” If you take into account how close SF and SJ are, that’s really 4 metro areas and probably a higher %. They define “innovation industries” as: “a subset of advanced industries that include the 13 most STEM- and R&D-intensive industries.” Based on the size of the Boston Sports Fan Group of Seattle and the number of friends in WA that I have who have moved to/from the Bay Area, I can anecdotally attest that there is a lot of internal migration between these top “innovation metro areas.” The report has a number of recommendations as to how government policy can encourage growth in other parts of the country. I’d love to see more of this type of economic policy enter the debate in the presidential race. There’s room for some discourse here and for the large policy teams on these campaigns to add to this set of ideas. We should have more national discussion in this space.
Also, as someone who has moved around a lot as an adult, I find that there are ways to find my people. For me, it’s finding the places where people gather around things that I like or where I have affiliations, such as politics (join the local party), sports (find the bar that shows your team and/or go join a local adult sports league), or just showing up in the community by volunteering and going to public events. Also, as an outgoing person I find that once you get to know a few people, people are willing to open up doors and make introductions. Most people are willing to meet up for coffee or a beer after an introduction from a mutual friend or after meeting out an event. The world can get very small, very quickly. You just have to get out there.
Looking forward to reading that Brookings report. Noah Smith had a column about how Universities and revive rural American. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-22/universities-and-colleges-can-revive-declining-rural-america
ReplyDeleteI really like that idea.
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