Why fewer Americans are moving

We sold my mom and dad’s dream home last autumn — the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired mid-century modern house they called home for 25 years.
Staying put is becoming more commonplace in America.
According to The Atlantic, America, once the most mobile society in the world, has become increasingly stagnant, with fewer people moving between cities, states and even neighborhoods.
The American Economic Association’s research finds that internal U.S. migration is at a 30-year low.
The Atlantic argues that declining mobility leads to fewer economic opportunities, more social division and greater political polarization.
Why?
Strict zoning laws and environmental restrictions prevent affordable housing from being built in cities with strong economies. That’s why job-rich places, such as San Francisco, have some of the highest home prices in the country.
The mortgage rate “lock-in effect” is another reason homeowners are staying put. Those with a 2% or 3% mortgage rate are reluctant to move and take on a new loan at 6% or higher.
The Atlantic says that one regrettable result of Americans staying put is a reduction in economic and cultural mixing between different groups, which increases political tribalism, making compromise and shared experiences rarer.
Moving certainly benefited me.
I moved from Pittsburgh to Alexandria, Va., in 1998 and lived in the D.C. area nearly eight years. It proved to be a great place to land good-paying communications clients.
As an adult, I never stayed anywhere long — until returning to Pittsburgh in 2011 to renovate and move into a property I’d rented out for years.

Though I agree that American mobility has long been one way for Americans to get ahead, there are some upsides to families staying put.
For 35 of my first 37 years, my mother and father resided in a two-story, four-bedroom home that was typical of 1960s suburbia.
My father remodeled the basement into a family room. And when my baby sister, Jennifer, expanded our household to eight, my parents added a fifth bedroom onto the first floor — where they were able to enjoy peace and quiet for the first time in their parental lives.
That house was a hub for many!
The door was never locked and aunts, uncles, friends and neighbors regularly stopped in to say hello. We have hundreds of photos of holiday parties, baptisms, confirmations, graduations and the weddings of all five of my sisters.
To accommodate our expanding clan, my parents moved to a larger, contemporary house in 1999 — a scandalous affair to my sisters and me, because Pittsburghers aren’t supposed to move from homes that hold so many memories for their kids.
It was designed and built by a family that was inspired by Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece 70 miles south of Pittsburgh.
That spacious house allowed even larger gatherings — and a happy and stable place for frequent movers like me to return to for holidays and family events.
The hope is that political leaders will remove the impediments to affordable housing, so that more Americans are free to move about the country in pursuit of their own economic happiness.
But I also hope that everyone has one home in their extended families that brings them as much peace and happiness as my parents’ two homes brought to my family.

Copyright 2025 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.