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Influence of Proximity to Kin on Residential Mobility and Destination Choice: Examining Local Movers in Metropolitan Areas

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Demography

Abstract

A growing body of research has examined how family dynamics shape residential mobility, highlighting the social—as opposed to economic—drivers of mobility. However, few studies have examined kin ties as both push and pull factors in mobility processes or revealed how the influence of kin ties on mobility varies across sociodemographic groups. Using data on local residential moves from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 1980 to 2013, we find that location of noncoresident kin influences the likelihood of moving out of the current neighborhood and the selection of a new destination neighborhood. Analyses of out-mobility reveal that parents and young adult children living near each other as well as low-income adult children living near parents are especially deterred from moving. Discrete-choice models of neighborhood selection indicate that movers are particularly drawn to neighborhoods close to aging parents, white and higher-income households tend to move close to parents and children, and lower-income households tend to move close to extended family. Our results highlight the social and economic trade-offs that households face when making residential mobility decisions, which have important implications for broader patterns of inequality in residential attainment.

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Notes

  1. Short-distance moves between neighborhoods within a metropolitan area constitute the majority (i.e., two-thirds) of all moves among residents of the United States (based on authors’ calculations of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2015).

  2. Kin networks include members related by blood, marriage, or adoption and include full siblings, half-siblings, and current stepsiblings. Analyses excluding adoptive and current stepparents and stepsiblings produce similar results. Grandparents and grandchildren also include great-grandparents and great-grandchildren. Our measures exclude ex-spouses and ex-step relationships, in-laws, and kin who are far removed.

  3. Moves to a new housing unit within the same census tract are not analyzed.

  4. Analyses in which siblings and extended kin are distinguished in separate measures produce substantively similar results.

  5. Results of models using 2- and 3-mile thresholds show weaker but substantively similar results compared with those presented in our main analysis.

  6. All monetary variables are adjusted for inflation and standardized to year 2000 dollars. Family income includes total income for all family members from taxable income, transfer income, and Social Security income.

  7. We tested alternative measures differentiating numbers of children within specific age categories but found no substantive differences compared with the results using a simple count of all children under 18.

  8. Variables with missing values include family income (83 respondents with missing information), employment status (36), and homeownership (1). Following White et al. (2011), all covariates and outcomes from our analysis are included in the imputation model.

  9. Tracts are restricted to those that have at least one housing unit given that tracts with zero units are not feasible as potential destinations.

  10. The probability of inclusion is equal to 1.0 for tracts that were ultimately chosen and tracts that have kin within one mile and 0.05 for the 5 % sample of other tracts. The probabilities enter the regression model as a constant, –ln(q ijt ), where q ijt is the probability that that the jth tract is included in respondent i’s choice set at time t.

  11. For a description of the methods for including interactions in nonlinear models, see Long (2006), Xu and Long (2005), and Buis (2010).

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SES-1258758 and SES-1258677) and by a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development research infrastructure grant (R24 HD042828) to the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology at the University of Washington. The collection of data used in this study was partly supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01 HD069609) and the National Science Foundation (1157698). We thank Peter Rich, Susan Brown, and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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Spring, A., Ackert, E., Crowder, K. et al. Influence of Proximity to Kin on Residential Mobility and Destination Choice: Examining Local Movers in Metropolitan Areas. Demography 54, 1277–1304 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0587-x

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