Richard Florida: Why Do People Move: Jobs or Housing?

[thelakelander]

A new study finds a close connection between the two.

RICHARD FLORIDA

Why do people move? Is it for jobs or is it for housing?

It's often assumed that people move to get better jobs.  But Census data show the main people reason move is to gain access to better housing. The issue is sometimes posed as a chicken-and-egg question: What comes first, people or jobs?

A new study published in the journal Urban Studies takes a close look at the connection between these two types of moves – moving for jobs versus moving for housing.  The study, by University of California, Irvine, social ecologist Jae Hong Kim, used American Community Survey (ACS) data and data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) to get at the interplay between the two.  His data cover 342 metropolitan areas and span two periods, before the Great Recession (2005-2007) and during (2008-2010), to deal with the effects of the economic crisis on mobility. Kim ran a series of statistical analyses to sort out the relationships between job and residential mobility.

The upshot: the two are more closely related than we might think. Moving for a job is associated with moving to find new housing, though the reverse is less common.

The first chart below shows the connection between job and residential mobility for the 2005-2007 period, before the recession.

Full article: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/10/why-do-people-move-jobs-or-housing/381803/