Census Bureau reports decline in mobility rate

People in the Northeast had the lowest moving rate, while those in the West had the highest

About 16 percent (43 million) of U.S. residents moved from one home to another between March 1997 and March 1998, a decline from the 16.5 percent who moved during the previous one-year period, according to a report by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.

"Millions of Americans continue to relocate each year," said Kenneth Prewitt, Census Bureau director, in a press release.

He added that it is the goal of the 2000 census "to count those on the move, to count them in the right location and to make Census 2000 the most complete and accurate census ever."

"In recent years, mobility rates have changed little or not at all, and in fact, the overall drop since the 1950s and 1960s has been only around 4 percentage points," said Carol Faber, author of the report "Geographical Mobility: March 1997 to March 1998."

Other highlights from the report, available on the Internet at

http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/migrate.html,

include:

Moving rates decline as people grow older: between March 1997 and March 1998, only 4 percent of those 65 and over moved while one-third of people ages 20 to 29 years old moved, the highest rate of all age groups.

Of the 43 million movers, 27.1 million moved within the same county, 7.9 million moved to another county in the same state and 6.4 million took up residence in a different state.

Additionally, during that one-year period, about 1.2 million people moved to the United States from abroad.

Non-Hispanic Whites had lower overall rates of moving, at 14.5 percent, than African Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, which was about 19 percent for each group.

People of Hispanic origin had the highest rate of moving at 21.2 percent.

One-third of America's renters moved between March 1997 and March 1998. In contrast, only 8.2 percent of homeowners moved during that time.

The Northeast had the lowest overall moving rate at 11.5 percent, well below the national rate of 16.0 percent followed by the Midwest at14.7 percent, the South at 17.2 percent and the West , at 19.4 percent.

Data are from the March 1998 Current Population Survey.

Statistics from these sample surveys are subject to sampling and nonsampling error.