Tag Archives: mobility

A predicted 1 billion international tourists in 2012 illustrates global mobility

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The UN suggests international tourism will hit a new high in 2012:

The U.N.’s World Trade Organization says 1 billion people will cross international borders as tourists this year for the first time…

That figure would be about 4 percent higher than last year’s total. Back in 1950, the figure was 25 million. The UN counts only people who stay at least one night. It does not include cruise ship passengers.

“It is quite iconic when you realize 1 billion people crossed borders,” Vogeler said at a Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association conference in Puerto Rico. “It shows from a sociological point of view how things have changed. If you go back 20-30 years, many people would die without traveling more than 100 miles from home.”…

The organization also projects that there will be 1.4 billion in 2020 and 1.8 billion in 2030.

Some of the sociological factors behind this:

1. More people with income that allows them to travel internationally. Such travel is not cheap but with rising incomes and a growing middle class in developing nations, there are more people who can travel. In other words, more people can afford to travel.

2. A growing cultural emphasis on the value of tourism and seeing different parts of the world. Perhaps part of this is due to more widespread information about other parts of the world. Or perhaps it reflects an idea that a well-rounded person is an international traveler. Regardless of the specific reason, this would mean more people want to travel.

Of course, other factors like cheaper and quicker transportation matter as well as a growing interest many countries (and cities) have in growing their economies through tourism and “selling” their attractions to visitors.

On the whole, I imagine the United Nations would want to promote this quite a bit. More international travel suggests more money will be flowing across borders and more international understanding is possible.

YMCA survey: 58% of Americans would move if they could

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A new survey commissioned by the YMCA suggests that more than 50% of Americans want to move out of their current neighborhood:

The Y Community Snapshot found:

  • 58 percent of respondents say they would move away from their community right now if they could, but the economy and their financial situations make moving increasingly difficult and not an option. Unable to move, Americans are putting more responsibility on local governments and themselves to impact change;
  • 63 percent of respondents say they will get more involved in their communities this year and will contribute goods, services, facilities or other non-monetary resources to a worthy cause or organization;
  • 76 percent of respondents say they are concerned about crime in their community, and according to a recent Gallup poll, nearly half of Americans say there is more crime where they live today than there was a year ago. A safe environment ranked as the most important quality in building a strong community;
  • The vast majority of respondents (72 percent) reported that budget cuts by government, social services and non-profit community organizations have had a negative impact on themselves and their families, with 22 percent saying they’ve felt a big negative impact.

The results to the individual questions may make sense: Americans have always been a mobile people (though mobility is down in recent years due to the economic crisis), Americans tend to be worried about crime even when crime rates are down (how likely is it that major crime rates are down and more than 50% of Americans say crime is up in their particular neighborhood?), and people are unlikely to respond favorably to budget cuts that impact them.

But I’m intrigued by how you would put all of these figures together: do Americans think there are a lot of wealthy, low crime, service-rich neighborhoods out there? Is this simply a case of “the grass is greener on the other side” or is everyone truly aiming to reach these fantastic neighborhoods? Even if there are enough neighborhoods that might fit this bill, how many of these great neighborhoods would not throw open their gates but would instead hunker down and restrict access and new development that might change their paradise?

The “gravity law” vs. the “radiation model” in predicting intercity mobility

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Here is an overview of two ways to model intercity mobility: the “gravity law” and the “radiation model” which was just recently proposed in Nature:

The reigning model of intercity mobility, used to predict patterns of movement from commuting to the spread of infectious disease, is called the “gravity law.” It was developed in the early 1940s by a Harvard lecturer named George Zipf and is, of course, based on Newton’s law, which says gravitational force increases when the mass of two objects is great and the distance between them is minimal.

In that same spirit, Zipf’s “gravity law” of mobility assumed that movement between two cities would be most frequent when their populations were large and their separation small. In reality, however, the “gravity law” doesn’t do a great job estimating the intercity movement it was intended to predict. While Zipf’s law frowns on the notion that people travel frequently between distant cities, recent research on so-called “super-commuters,” outlined by our own Richard Florida, shows that a considerable subset of urban populations is actually willing to commute quite far…

The “radiation model,” as the new idea is called, makes several assumptions the gravity model does not. For starters, it downplays the distance between two cities and emphasizes not only the cities themselves but the density of the areas surrounding them. That enables the model to estimate the number of jobs in a region more accurately. It also accounts a bit more for actual human behavior: while the radiation model presumes that people choose a job based on a balance of proximity and benefits, it recognizes that they’re willing to make long commutes if few jobs in their region satisfy their requirements.

As a result, the radiation model out-predicts the “gravity law” in direct competition. As an example, the researchers looked at mobility between two pairs of counties in Utah and Alabama. Both counties of origin had similar populations, as did both destination counties, and both pairs are more or less equidistant from one another. Actual Census data shows that 44 people make the commute in Utah, while six do in Alabama.

This sounds very interesting and required advances in data collection on this topic as well as modeling social networks and demographics. The main finding seems to be this: distance is not the only factor that matters in looking at trips between cities. As the case of the super-commuters suggests, people will live one place and work in another place far away in the right circumstances. Perhaps we should have already known this because of the relative importance of different cities: world-class cities or cultural centers or centers for certain industries (New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, respectively) would draw people from longer distances compared to “average” big cities (St. Louis? Denver?). Or, if we put this in world systems theory terms, certain cities sit at the center of American urban life and businesses and industries tend to concentrate within them while other cities are in more peripheral positions.

I would be interested to know whether the “radiation model” can suggest whether the number of super commuters will increase in the long-term and how this is affected by the strength of the overall economy and housing market.

Migration after a “millionaire’s tax”

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A number of states are considering raising taxes for wealthy residents and some have argued that such taxes push wealthy people to move to another state. Here is a brief summary of some research on what happened in New Jersey after a millionaire’s tax was implemented in 2004:

A 2004 “millionaire’s tax” in New Jersey had little effect on migration, according to a study by Stanford University sociologist Cristobal Young and Princeton University sociologist Charles Varner published this year in the National Tax Journal. Moving from California to escape taxes is even more difficult.

“Many people in New Jersey could move 30 or 40 miles and find themselves in lower-tax Connecticut or Pennsylvania,” Young said in an email. “If you are in the Bay Area, it is a 500- to 700-mile move to competing urban areas such as Las Vegas or Phoenix. That is a tough move – you will be starting a new life.”

The New Jersey Department of the Treasury issued its own research in October that countered the Young-Varner study. The department is led by an appointee of Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a vocal opponent of a new “millionaire’s tax.”

In a state with 8.7 million residents, the department said that all tax increases – not just those on the wealthy – resulted in 20,000 fewer taxpayers.

So it sounds like both research studies could be right? Though I haven’t read either study, the loss of 20,000 taxpayers from New Jersey doesn’t sound like much. Additionally, there are a lot of reasons people could move and taxes are just one part of the larger business climate and cultural setting. Without clear trends in the data or interviews or surveys with people who leave, it would be hard to know that taxes were what pushed people out of the state.

The argument that it might be more difficult to move out of California because of greater geographic isolation is intriguing. I would think that distance matters less than other characteristics that draw people to California such as the weather and exciting cities. If geographic isolation is a key factor, we would see more movement in metropolitan areas that straddle states, such as New York City or Chicago where residents who want to protest or move because of taxes could live over the border in Indiana or Wisconsin and still be part of the region.

When states consider higher taxes for millionaires, why haven’t more millionaires acted like corporations who then threaten to leave and force tax breaks? Would it be too easy to vilify individual wealthy residents?

In the end, I wonder about the validity of arguments that people move solely in response to tax rates.

States with the highest percentages of homegrown residents

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The Census Bureau recently released statistics about which states have the most residents who were born in that state:

Nationally, on average, 60 percent of people are living in their native state. According to a Governing Magazine analysis, states in the interior South and Midwest tend to have a higher percentage of natives. Louisiana tops the list, with 79 percent of its population born there.

Among large metro areas, Birmingham ranks near the top: 74 percent of the metro population was born in Alabama, the 6th-highest percentage of homegrown residents among the top 50 U.S. metros…

Jim Williams, executive director of the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, has spent years trying to persuade governments to adopt changes to governmental practices developed in other states. Progress is difficult, he said…

There is a lot of literature in sociology and psychology establishing that a lack of contact with other groups tends to maintain stereotypes, Fording said. Conversely, contact between groups tends to overcome stereotypes.

Here is the list of the top 10 states: Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Iowa, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama.

It is a little difficult to look at this list and see the exact traits these states share. The regions and the cultures are similar in the South and Midwest though this doesn’t apply to Pennsylvania (maybe the western half but not so much the eastern half?) or maybe West Virginia. Other factors that may be influential:

1. Immigration rates.

2. Lack of world/global cities which tend to attract diverse groups of people.

3. Lower levels of education?

4. Density of population/more rural areas.

It would be interesting to ask residents of these states why they stay. It is one thing to stay because one likes the place versus the opportunities to move elsewhere are lacking. While Americans might romanticize small town life and talk about establishing roots, this likely varies from place to place. Certain values, such as interacting with people different from oneself or having access to cultural amenities or always being willing to move to follow job opportunities, could then trump geographic stability.

Reduced American mobility

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One of the hallmarks of American life in the last 60 years is the incredible mobility. Even a few years ago, the average American family moved every 5-6 years.

But this has changed with the recent economic downtown:

“We’re seeing one of the lowest mobility rates in a century,” says Nathaniel Karp, chief economist for banking firm BBVA Compass. Karp says the recession has forced many people to stay put because they are unable to sell their homes, cannot find jobs or are unwilling to relocate for work if it means sacrificing a partner’s stable position.

The slowdown makes the question of who’s moving and why even more significant than in years past.

If people can move frequently, it leads to people being able to move to where the jobs are available, it means that the housing market has more people who are selling and buying, and it influences the middle-class and above ethos that you can determine your own destiny.

This psychological feeling that movement is possible might have a profound effect if the mobility rate stays low. In recent decades, the decently educated and paid American could expect that they would come out of school, move to where a job was available, move up to a house, and then continue a cycle of better job leading to better house and then going to a better job and so on. But this has changed somewhat: college graduates are returning home more frequently and there are many who are stuck in houses where they owe too much money.

Overall, this would impact what it means to be middle class: it would still lead to having certain levels of education and consumption but it wouldn’t mean the greater “freedom” of being able to move where one wants to.

Prolonged housing issues: one-third of Chicago homes underwater

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The housing crisis of recent years is not just about foreclosures. The loss in housing value across the board means that many homeowners with mortgages owe more on those mortgages than their house is worth. This is a common occurence in the Chicago region where new data suggests one-third of homes are underwater, a rate almost ten percent higher than the national average:

Some 32.9 percent of all local single-family detached homes with mortgages were underwater in September, meaning the homeowners owed more on the loans than the properties are worth, according to new data from realty Web site Zillow.com. That compares with 30.9 percent in June and 27.2 percent in September 2009. The report does not include data on condominiums.

Nationally, 23.2 percent of homes have negative equity.

“Negative equity is going to continue to cast a pall over the housing market for the next several years,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist. “All these people are trapped in their homes and can’t move onto another one and it’s throwing off more foreclosures. For people who are not going to move anytime soon, it is much more of an academic issue. For people who need to move or who encounter an economic issue, it’s a material issue.”

I haven’t seen too many people speculating about the social consequences of this. Americans in the last 60 years have been fairly mobile people but these sorts of mortgage situations limits that. This may have consequences for job markets; even if there are jobs available elsewhere, fewer people are then able to pick up relatively quickly and move. On the other hand, it may lead to increased “feelings or perceptions of neighborhood” as more residents have to stay put longer than they would have even just five years ago.

Good news about Chicago traffic and congestion – but due to new criteria

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A new report from a group named CEOs for Cities claims that Chicagoans spend the least amount of time in rush-hour traffic compared to other major cities:

The report’s ranking of mobility in 51 cities found that Chicago-area residents spend the least time in rush-hour travel. In Chicago and some of the other best-performing cities — including New Orleans, New York, Portland, Ore., and Sacramento, Calif. — commuters typically spend 40 fewer hours a year in peak-hour travel than the average American, the report said.

In metro areas with the worst urban sprawl — including Nashville, Detroit, Indianapolis and Raleigh, N.C. — residents spend as much as 240 hours per year in rush-period travel on average because commuting distances are much longer, said the report, which was produced with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation.

This seems to be contrary to other studies I’ve seen that suggest Chicago is quite congested. One reason this study might have different results is a new criteria in the methodology.

The report’s author criticized other mobility studies that focus on the amount of traffic congestion in a region without factoring in travel distance.

The Urban Mobility Report, issued every two years by the Texas Transportation Institute, is regarded by many experts as the authoritative voice on traffic congestion issues. The report consistently ranks the Chicago region as the second or third most-congested area of the nation. It does not account for travel distance.

I am left wondering whether travel distance an important factor to include…

The Infrastructurist comments on the disparities in the two sets of rankings.

The effects of decreased mobility

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Christianity Today explores the implications of decreased American mobility for churches. According to Census figures:

Despite commercial air travel, interstate highways, mobile phones, and e-mail, the mobility rate has declined steadily since the U.S. Census Bureau began tracking such data in 1948. In the aftermath of World War II, as suburbs began sprouting from farmland, a record 21.2 percent of Americans moved between 1950 and 1951. But only 13.2 percent of Americans moved between 2006 and 2007. Then in April 2009, the Census Bureau reported that a mere 11.9 percent of Americans moved in 2008. This rate was the lowest in recorded U.S. history, and the 1.3 percent drop between 2007 and 2008 was the second-largest one-year decline. The number rebounded only barely in 2009, to 12.5 percent.

Looks like people are staying put though 35 million Americans still moved in 2008. This also suggests the suburbs are no longer drawing people like they used to – perhaps the result of many Americans growing up in suburbia and then sticking around. Some of these suburbs (and their churches) will become established places and will have to move past an image of being “new” or “recent.”

I would think this mobility rate will increase when the economy picks up again.