Are we mobile?
Posted by: velofellow on 31 October 2015
I was recently at a loose end and decided to look up a few university friends that I have l had lost touch with over the years. It is 40 years since I graduated and I have lived and worked in Portsmouth, Oxford, Birmingham, Newark and Nottingham. Now retired, I live in a sleepy village in Nottinghamshire. Not exactly globe trotting but some movement.
Whilst it is true that my sample was small, the majority of the people I contacted lived in the same town that they lived in in the 1970s. As an economist I wonder if this apparent lack of mobility is reflected in the rest of our society and is it having and adverse impact on the UK economy?
I have the feeling that people nowadays are more mobile then in the past. If I look in the Netherlands then it looks like most people move a couple of times in their lifetimes. Me being an extreme example as I am already quite long living in Germany and also spent time in Hong Kong...., so while I am a more extreme case, in general I think people are more mobile.
fairly mobile: Mid- Wales to SE England (Suburbia) to Denmark to US to Germany
Many friends still in environs of school or Uni and others scattered to all 4 corners
Before I went self employed I moved according to where the next job was. Or I lived in rented accommodation.
New Zealand, Australia, UK and now Canada. So I've not really pushed the cultural extremes, but I have moved around a bit.
I have never been resident more than fifty miles from where I was born. So not very mobile at all!
I would like to get back to near Hereford though and reduce the distance to less than ten miles!
ATB from George
My dad was in the RAF so I travelled aroudn Europe when I was a child buut as an adult the furthest I have lived from where I was born was twenty miles, so not mobile at all really. The same applies to the majority of people I know - the live within the same town they lived in when they were children.
A few hundred km would count as mobile in the UK (though not of course globe-trotting...
I grew up on the edge of London, and since leaving home at age 19 I've lived NE England, NW England, Home Counties and South Wales, and now on a moderately remote island. All moves for career progression. longest period in one place 13 years, shortest 1 year,
Meanwhile I haven't always stay put in each area: since leaving my childhood home I've lived in 8 houses (as a house buyer), and 3 rented flats.
As an oblique observation, the first house I bought in outer London cost just under £10k in 1975, and is probably worth £450k today. If I'd stayed put more I would probably have made enough from property to have retired by now!
Born Essex, University of Nottingham, work N Yorkshire since then.
A gradual gravitation northwards, quality of both work and living environment being the pull against a complete lack of affection for the area of my birth. I have been in the same job for nearly 22years; continuity of care is one of the greatest satisfactions. I do feel distant from my parents as they age, they are a long drive away still in Essex. Cannot be helped; they would never move North as they consider it a lawless, frozen wasteland anywhere above about Leicester.
Skipton where I work is in many ways still partly an old-fashioned community. It is not rare for me to look after 3 (and sometimes 4) generations still living within a few miles of each other. I am not suggesting it is some rural backwater of straw-chewing hicks but it does still have a sense if identity and stability that I like.
Bruce
They are so wrong - it begins at Gloucester....
The problem can be found far further south, such as the beautiful looking Blandford Forum. Beautiful to look at by day and a nest of drug dealing iniquity by night.
I have a friend who lives there and he assured me that the place is not nearly as idyllic as it looks in the morning sunshine!
ATB from George
NW London, Bournemouth, Chichester, Cape Town, Chalfont St Giles, Toronto, Calgary...
It's been varied for me, but the majority of my other friends have stayed put, a few have tried moving but ended up coming back. It was easy moving when single, harder now with a family. The one thing I miss most from England is the history and direct family. That said my brother moved to Paris.
If I had the time again, I wouldn't change anything, other than trying to keep and rent out the England properties - prices are crazy !