Dear Reader,
Americans used to move from place to place more often than anyone else. But over the past 50 years, that engine of opportunity has slowly ground to a halt. We are, in a word, stuck.
The sharp decline in geographic mobility is the single most important social change of the past half century. In the 19th century, perhaps as many as one in three Americans moved each year. In 1970, it was one in five. But in December, the government announced we had set a dismal new low of one in 13. |
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Dear Reader, Americans used to move from place to place more often than anyone else. But over the past 50 years, that engine of opportunity has slowly ground to a halt. We are, in a word, stuck. The sharp decline in geographic mobility is the single most important social change of the past half century. In the 19th century, perhaps as many as one in three Americans moved each year. In 1970, it was one in five. But in December, the government announced we had set a dismal new low of one in 13.
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The decline has been accompanied by other changes. Fewer Americans start new businesses or switch jobs. More Americans end up worse off than their parents. Membership in churches and groups is falling. The birth rate is steeply down. And we’re less likely to trust one another. These seemingly unconnected changes all trace back, at least in part, to our loss of mobility. It has left many Americans feeling trapped and hopeless, stripping them of agency and denying them the chance to give themselves and their children a better life.
For the past few years, I’ve been trying to figure out why Americans stopped moving. That search brought me back to the raucous 19th-century celebrations of Moving Day, when the bulk of a city’s residents might pack their belongings and swap homes between sunup and sundown. Relocation, in those years, was a means of self-improvement, driven by the tantalizing promise that by changing their location, Americans could alter their fate.
But by the late 20th century, I discovered, a series of legal changes had given people tools to veto the construction of new housing in their neighborhoods. That, in turn, made moving harder for most Americans to afford, leaving them priced out of the places that offered the greatest opportunities. The frequent moves that were once a distinctive American habit are now largely a privilege of the educated and the affluent.
But those changes are recent and reversible. In my new cover story for The Atlantic, I explore how we lost our mobility—and how we can get it back. The good news is that, although a great many problems require tremendous sacrifice to solve, we can simply build our way out of this one. All it takes is adjusting our rules to allow for more housing—enough to let Americans live where they want. So this is ultimately a hopeful story. I think we can still reverse the rise of inequality, diminish the bitterness of our politics, and give our children better opportunities—because that’s precisely how America operated before, and can again.
I hope you’ll become a subscriber to The Atlantic to support stories like this one—stories that delve into the past to help imagine a better future. |
The decline has been accompanied by other changes. Fewer Americans start new businesses or switch jobs. More Americans end up worse off than their parents. Membership in churches and groups is falling. The birth rate is steeply down. And we’re less likely to trust one another. These seemingly unconnected changes all trace back, at least in part, to our loss of mobility. It has left many Americans feeling trapped and hopeless, stripping them of agency and denying them the chance to give themselves and their children a better life.
For the past few years, I’ve been trying to figure out why Americans stopped moving. That search brought me back to the raucous 19th-century celebrations of Moving Day, when the bulk of a city’s residents might pack their belongings and swap homes between sunup and sundown. Relocation, in those years, was a means of self-improvement, driven by the tantalizing promise that by changing their location, Americans could alter their fate.
But by the late 20th century, I discovered, a series of legal changes had given people tools to veto the construction of new housing in their neighborhoods. That, in turn, made moving harder for most Americans to afford, leaving them priced out of the places that offered the greatest opportunities. The frequent moves that were once a distinctive American habit are now largely a privilege of the educated and the affluent.
But those changes are recent and reversible. In my new cover story for The Atlantic, I explore how we lost our mobility—and how we can get it back. The good news is that, although a great many problems require tremendous sacrifice to solve, we can simply build our way out of this one. All it takes is adjusting our rules to allow for more housing—enough to let Americans live where they want. So this is ultimately a hopeful story. I think we can still reverse the rise of inequality, diminish the bitterness of our politics, and give our children better opportunities—because that’s precisely how America operated before, and can again.
I hope you’ll become a subscriber to The Atlantic to support stories like this one—stories that delve into the past to help imagine a better future. |
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Illustration by Javier Jaén
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The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem. |
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