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

census.gov

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

#101

Post by canniballectern »

cletus wrote: post #80

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 sta…

> 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.

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

#102

Post by dibt »

theonemind wrote: post #68

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 abod…

> 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."

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

#103

Post by akiselev »

Yhippa wrote: post #87
parker_mountain wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading. Genuinely curious: what is the basis for that claim? Even if you don't cite a source. Edit: these responses are very insightful. Thank you all for the responses.

See the Strong Towns article "The Growth Ponzi Scheme" [1] and the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card for more concrete data [2].

The gist is that we've funded the construction of our infrastructure nationwide without accounting for the cost of maintenance. Now after decades of neglect, the cost of fixing all of our infrastructure is astronomical, far worse than if we had been doing it correctly from the beginning.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

[2] https://infrastructurereportcard.org/

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

#104

Post by eddsh1994 »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #63
fullshark wrote: post #37

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…

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.

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.

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

#105

Post by karamanolev »

Yhippa wrote: post #87
parker_mountain wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading. Genuinely curious: what is the basis for that claim? Even if you don't cite a source. Edit: these responses are very insightful. Thank you all for the responses.

Aside from the other replies, they are degrading in terms of "living experience" - infrastructure, budgets, HOAs and whatnot. The infrastructure is being subsidised by dense cities, as there's simply too much street/pipe/wire per capita to support. So you either get prohibitive taxes, unsustainable budgets or subsidies from some level of government. Either way, they're not heading in a good direction.

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

#106

Post by caned »

bluGill wrote: post #66
nerdjon wrote: post #53

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 p…

I've live many hours away from my parents, and I no consider it insane to do so. When I lived with my parents I could make a few phone calls and have a dozen people on my roof - now if there is a problem I have to pay a crew even though I know how to do the work (since there are things that cannot be done alone) When my wife and I want a date - too bad: there is no babysitter nearby that will work on Friday night tha…

> However eventually I want to come back home.

Make a move before it's too late. Or convince them to move close to you.

If you love being with your parents, your window of doing so is fast shrinking.

I wish I had understood this sooner.

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

#107

Post by bradlys »

emodendroket wrote: post #10

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.

> 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.

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

#108

Post by rhino369 »

irrational wrote: post #9

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 n…

Moving for a job has a huge social cost for most people. You leave behind everyone you know.

That might be worth it for someone who wants to forge a career or explore. But for the average person who pushes paper at a generic office? You can do that anywhere. So why not do it where everyone you know lives?

There is a trade off to never putting down roots.

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

#109

Post by another_story »

saraton1n wrote: post #34

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 imagin…

I split my childhood between three places, and my adult life between four, many in different countries. The wife and I are planning to move again next year.

It's sometimes hard when you see others with their consistent lives, and roots laid down, but at the same time they'll often say how they envy you.

It's similar to the choice of having or not having kids. The trade off in life experiences is neither better or worse, just different.

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

#110

Post by duped »

Yhippa wrote: post #87
parker_mountain wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Many suburbs are not sustainable, and are degrading. Genuinely curious: what is the basis for that claim? Even if you don't cite a source. Edit: these responses are very insightful. Thank you all for the responses.

Not GP but locally there are a few exurbs that have serious budget problems because they overbuilt infrastructure and don't have the tax base to fully maintain it which creates a feedback loop of poorly maintained roads, water systems, parks, etc.

Some of it had to do with the murder of brick and mortar retail in tightly packed downtowns in favor of the big box stores on the edge of town. That creates an enormous waste in municipal resources, doubly so if the store got property/sales tax subsidies.

This is less of an issue in the denser near suburbs where populations and revenues have been consistently rising the last few years.

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