Why do Americans stay when their town has no future?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

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America was built on the idea of picking yourself up and striking out for more promising territory. Ohio itself was settled partly by early New Englanders who quit their rocky farms for more tillable land to the west. Some of these population shifts helped reshape the country: the 1930s migration from the Dust Bowl to California; the Great Migration of blacks to the North and West, which occurred in phases between 1910 and 1960; the Hillbilly Highway migration of Appalachian whites to the industrial Midwest in the 1940s and ‘50s.

In recent years, though, Americans have grown less likely to migrate for opportunity. As recently as the early 1990s, 3 percent of Americans moved across state lines each year, but today the rate is half that. Fewer Americans moved in 2017 than in any year in at least a half-century. This change has caused consternation among economists and pundits, who wonder why Americans, especially those lower on the income scale, lack their ancestors’ get-up-and-go. “Why is this happening?” New York Times columnist David Brooks asked in 2014. His answer: “A big factor here is a loss in self-confidence. It takes faith to move.” Economist Tyler Cowen wrote last year that “poverty and low incomes have flipped from being reasons to move to reasons not to move, a fundamental change from earlier American attitudes.”

The reluctance to move is all the more confounding given how wide the opportunity gap has grown between the country’s most dynamic urban areas and its struggling small cities and towns, a divide driven by a mix of factors that include technology, globalization and economic concentration. According to a new Brookings Institution report, the largest metro areas — those of 1 million or more people — have experienced 16.7 percent employment growth since 2010, and areas with 250,000 to 1 million have seen growth of 11.6 percent, while areas with fewer than 250,000 residents have lagged far, far behind, with only 0.4 percent growth. The question has taken on a stark political dimension, too, given how much Trump outperformed past Republican candidates in those left-behind places.

For policymakers, the low rates of migration to opportunity present a conundrum. Should there be a wholesale effort to revitalize places that have lost their original economic rationale? Or should the emphasis be on making it easier for people in these places to move elsewhere?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/why-do-americans-stay-when-their-town-has-no-future/ar-AAxFPv1?li=BBnbfcN

[Alethia Merritt]

1. Most can't afford to move.

I believe one of HRC's plans for the rust belt was to offer some kind of housing subsidies along with training for 21st century jobs. Oh, well. We all know that the 1% has kept their thumb on housing to ensure that the "undesirables to them" can't afford decent housing. For example, all those pill-box homes and condos being built with laundered money from Russia, China, Turkey, and even Ireland. Made out of cheap crappy materials but starting around $800,000.00.

Shameful!

[ansible]

2. Because of family ties

If it weren't for family here being able to help me out I would've moved out of California a long time ago as it's gotten increasingly difficult to live here with the high cost of living.

[LuckyLib]

3. Family and friends. During the Depression

so many people migrated and cut those ties for survival. You weren’t going to be sitting on your ass. You had immediate family and family back home to help out. My Dad hitchhiked from Ohio to the west coast to find work. Also one less mouth to feed at home.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. Because Mom needs help caring for Dad and there are no nurses in the area. Because your sister

pays you a little to watch her kids while she's in the next town over trying to get her nursing assistant certification. Because you don't have the resources to leave and anywhere you think you want to go is too expensive to live in on what you have. Because the last time you left to take a promising new job, the company shut down after six months and moved the jobs to Mexico. Etc.

[Demovictory9]

5. it is emotionally hard to move

[X_Digger]

6. Rising housing costs? Stagnant wages? You'd think an economist would know that.

"Job growth" that means more folks doing jobs that don't pay enough to live in the cities they work in?

Pfhah, there are none so blind as those who will not see.

[Xolodno]

7. Shit load of reasons...not one underlying factor.

1. Company is not offering relocation assistance.

2. Still underwater on the mortgage.

3. Family is close by.

4. Certain places in the US, just aren't that appealing. Got a voicemail once from a company recruiter, which was based in North Carolina, I thought "Cool, I'd love to live near the coast on the east...I've lived in So Cal all my life". Then I looked up where they were headquartered. Smack dab in the middle of the state, so lots of humidity in the summer and a good ways away from the ocean. Add insult to injury, city was known to be the Bible capital of the state...if not country "whatta ya mean I can't buy beer on Sunday?!" So, I called back and declined.

5. People don't like change.

6. Can be highly disruptive to your family, i.e. kids lose their friends and have to start all over in a new and strange school, etc.

[matt819]

22. Exactly

There are so many reasons for not picking up stakes.

And where do they go? We keep hearing about jobs going unfilled. Where are they? And at what pay? And what about decently priced housing? Or the cost of such a move? Leaps of faith may have been possible a generation ago. Less so now, I would argue.

[EffieBlack]

8. For many of them, it is a sense of privilege

After years of demagogic politicians appealing to their worst instincts and telling them they'd already done enough while "those people" got over, they're convinced they shouldn't have to sacrifice anything to improve their lives. So, they don't want to move, they don't want to change jobs or retrain for the 21st century economy and think they should be able to stay right where they are and earn the kind of living their parents and grandparents did, just as they did. And when they can't or won't, it's not their fault but further proof of the damage "those people" are doing to the country.

[B2G]

11. Privilege??

Read the other responses on the thread.

[EffieBlack]

14. Yes, privilege.

[B2G]

19. The people who end up staying are the poorest.

And yet the first word that pops into your head is 'privilege'.

Odd.

[EffieBlack]

21. Yes, because I have studied and understand these dynamics.

There is more than one kind of privilege. Economic wealth often has nothing to do with it. And, sometimes the poorest people hang on to that privilege because they think it’s all they’ve got.

I recommend you read “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson. Another good read is “Jefferson’s Pillow” by Roger Wilkins.

[treestar]

15. I agree; they believe they should not have to

It always took some money to immigrate to another country, or move across the U.S., go west, etc. But people think they have gotten to the point where they should not have to uproot themselves. It would have been tough to leave family behind, yet people did it to survive. It is harder now, because people seem closer to their families and they think they are the only ones who would help them in a pinch.

[Boomerproud]

9. I see this every day at my manufacturing job.

Lack of self esteem coupled with contempt for anyone with educational goals. They're all Trumpets.

[meow2u3]

10. They have set generations of roots there

It's not fair to expect people to uproot themselves just to find work.

[AJT]

17. Immigrants do it. They leave their country and family to

find work and make a better life.

[gollygee]

12. It costs money to move, and people don't want to leave what they know in the hope

they'll find a job somewhere else. There's no guarantee.

[iamateacher]

13. Cities are expensive. People lack the thousands for deposit money

On expensive apartments...to park their vehicles, etc.

[madville]

16. It's easier to stay put these days if one can get on government benefits

Years ago, before SNAP, public housing, Medicaid, Disability, Unemployment, etc. existed, one would have to move to where there was work or you and your family would starve. Now in many places people can get food cards, housing, medical care, maybe a disability or unemployment check. There is no urgency or necessity for many to move from poor economic wastelands if they can scrap by on available benefits.

I'm not saying any of that is bad but I believe it is the primary thing allowing people to survive in places that lack opportunity.

[mythology]

18. The difference is in the past, there was greater potential for economic improvement

Moving to get a job in a factory, or to farm your own land, or out west to try to find gold etc, all had the potential to increase your income. Instead now you'd be moving for the same sort of job as you have now unless you can increase your skills, in which case you probably wouldn't have to move. Even in smaller areas there are opportunities to get a better job. Sure it would pay better in an urban environment, but your dollar won't go as far, so moving may not be worth it, especially considering other factors.

[leftyladyfrommo]

20. Because it is home. nt

[lunatica]

23. Job opportunities elsewhere are too hard to come by

historically there used to be a destination with job opportunities to move to.

Seasonal workers moved to follow crop harvesting, or tourist destinations at the different times of the year. Oil rig workers travel during oil boom times and then leave as the oil is used up.

The dust bowl forced families to move from the drought stricken Midwest to California. Before that it was the Gold Rush which also caused people to keep moving whenever the gold was depleted. Construction workers moved when there was new construction during those boom days. When building malls was popular they moved from one mall construction job to the next.

Now there is not any of the above.

The number of people losing their jobs to automation, never to get them back is rising. Many factors contribute. More people are losing jobs than new jobs opening up. And the competition for those jobs is vetting higher and higher.