Recent Relocation Patterns Among Older Adults in the United States

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings

Residential relocation is a way for older adults to cope with income changes, health changes, and other life cycle events such as the loss of a partner. The number of movers aged 60 and older increased by 1.4 million from 2010 to 2019 in the United States. Therefore, it is timely to examine older adults’ recent relocation patterns. Using multiple national-level data sources, we asked two questions: First, who are movers among older adults, and why are they moving? Second, what are their destination regions and neighborhoods? Results show that movers tend to be renters, those with lower incomes, those with higher housing cost burdens, and those who live alone. Although older adults’ primary reason for relocation is to live closer to their families, baby boomers younger than 70 have more heterogeneous moving reasons than older cohorts. We classify older adult movers into three types: aging adapters (56.9% of movers), suburb lovers (37.5% of movers), and long-distance movers (5.6% of movers).

Takeaway for practice

Our findings suggest short- and long-term strategies for planners to help older adults meet their heterogeneous residential needs. Practitioners should take steps to increase housing affordability for older adults, such as through changes in land use controls, by creating more age-restricted and age-inclusive communities to accommodate the diverse needs of movers among older adults, and by promoting age-friendly ride-hailing and public transit systems.

Keywords:

• age-friendly communities
• housing
• housing affordability
• older adults
• residential relocation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to Dr. Ann Forsyth and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that substantially improved our work. Thanks to Weining Fang for her excellent assistance in the literature review and to Pete Kimchuk, who provided useful writing suggestions.

RESEARCH SUPPORT

We are grateful for the financial support from the Departmental Research Support Scheme from the Department of Public Policy at the City University of Hong Kong and a fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be found on the publisher’s website.

Notes

1 The 2000 data came from the Decennial Census data for 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020a).

2 The analysis was based on the number of moves in the past year in 2010 and 2019 American Community Survey 1-year data.

3 AHS adopted the concept of the “mover group” to differentiate people in a single household moving to different places. For each household, AHS has at most four mover groups. In our sample, mover group 1 included the most recent movers (93.8%) and thus we only used this group of movers in our sample. We then used the household ID to match the household socioeconomic attributes and housing unit attributes with the individual-level information. Among our movers in AHS, the youngest household head was 17 and the oldest was 85.

4 Whether the homes or communities were better than before were entirely based on movers’ perceptions rather than objective measurements.

5 Respondents were first asked about the zip code of their previous address. The survey agency used the reported zip code to determine whether the distance between the current address and the previous address was more than 50 miles. If the respondents did not know the code, they were directly asked whether the move was more than 50 miles.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shengxiao (Alex) Li

SHENGXIAO (ALEX) LI ([email protected]) is a doctoral candidate in city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania.

Wanyang Hu

WANYANG HU ([email protected]) is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong.

Fuyu Guo

FUYU GUO ([email protected]) is an undergraduate student in public health at Peking University.