Residential Mobility of Blacks and Whites: A National Longitudinal Survey

A limited literature suggests that blacks move more often than whites but that their mobility is more local. In testing this double hypothesis with interviews from a national panel of 1,500 households, we find that greater black mobility is largely explained by blacks' tendency to be renters. Black renters are less likely to move, and black owners are about as stable residentially. Furthermore, blacks are more likely to move only within their nighborhoods or communities and much less likely to move elsewhere in the metropolitan area or to migrate out of it. Not only do different racial categories move differently, but they apparently do so for different reason.