American residential mobility is lower now than it has ever been

Evidence

During the 1950s, 20 percent of Americans changed residence each year, 7 percent moving to a different county or state. During the 1990s the comparable figures are 16 percent and 6 percent. Americans today are, if anything, slightly more rooted residentially than a generation ago. In 1968 (when civic engagement was near its peak) the average American adult had lived in the same locality for twenty-two years; three decades later that figure remained essentially unchanged. Although historical data on residential mobility are incomplete, residential mobility may never have been lower in our national history than it is at the close of the twentieth century. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 686

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘rootlessness’ intuition is so culturally pervasive that a claim this cleanly falsifying it feels worth double-checking against what the census actually measures — does ‘still in same locality’ mask churn within regions?
• CANDY: Great dinner-party myth-buster: Americans in the 1990s were more rooted residentially than at any point in national history, not less.