If Declining Towns 'Deserve to Die,' Where Should Their Residents Go?

 

Connecting state and local government leaders

Some economists and pundits claim Americans aren’t moving enough, but how people should respond to that is unclear.

In 2011, economists from the Federal Reserve and the University of Notre Dame issued a working paper called “Internal Migration in the United States.” In it, they concluded that “internal migration has fallen noticeably since the 1980s, reversing increases from earlier in the century.” In other words, Americans are moving less than they used to.

In that paper, and in research since, it’s been shown that the decline in migration holds up across the board, from high-school and college graduates to dropouts. Wealthier people are moving less than they used to, and so are poorer people. Migration from both distressed areas and prosperous areas has declined.

Researchers have resisted coming to any definite conclusions about what underlies this decreased mobility. As Derek Thompson wrote for The Atlantic last year, so far there’s no good one-size-fits-all explanation. There’s also no consensus about what this lessening of internal migration means for the American economy.

But this lack of clarity has not stopped slackening mobility from becoming fodder for arguments about the fates of communities in decline. A popular consensus is developing that because inhabitants are staying put, they have only themselves to blame.

One emblematic argument came from the writer Kevin D. Williamson in a 2016 essay in National Review. “The truth about these downscale communities is that they deserve to die,” Williamson wrote. “Economically, they are negative assets.” To Williamson, the solution was obvious: “They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need a U-Haul.”

That argument seems to have become louder and more insistent lately. In early March, Arthur Brooks, the president of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told Kai Ryssdal on Marketplace, “The main reason that people who are older wind up being displaced and permanently displaced is because we’re getting less and less mobile.” In the old days, when Brooks was a child, he said, Americans moved all the time. Staying put, he argued, was “anathema to the American experience.” Brooks implied that the idea of staying in a town because people had family there, had lived there most of their lives, or simply loved the place indicated a profound lack of gumption.

His logic was that America was a land of pioneers in covered wagons: If the U.S. economy was going to churn once again for the benefit of all, he argued, “one of the things we also have to do is to get people moving more.”

Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, put forward a similar argument in a book released earlier this year, The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream. In it, Cowen stressed that this decreased mobility—for low earners as well as high earners—is worrisome. A Time adaptation of the book was headlined “The Unseen Threat to America: We Don’t Leave Our Hometowns.” Other headline writers took it even further. “How American Workers Got Lazy,” blared the Wall Street Journal. An April 25 column in the San Francisco Chronicle was topped with “Americans are lazy and complacent — here’s how.”

Packing up and moving is coming to be seen as an individual’s antidote to an unkind job market. Late last month, writing in The New York Times, the writer and New York University journalism teacher Suketu Mehta encouraged Americans to get out of their hometowns and work abroad. His pitch was directed to the well-off—who, he suggested, might be interested to learn that commercial pilots can earn $300,000 a year in China—as well as to lower earners. For this latter group, he noted, “A 150-peso-an-hour job in an automobile plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, isn’t the same as a $40-an-hour union job in Detroit; but you will live much better than if you made $8 an hour slinging burgers in Scranton.”

When I read this, I wondered if it was satire. I thought of an acquaintance of mine, John Oatney. He wasn’t about to fly airplanes, nor build cars in Mexico. I’d gotten to know John over the course of reporting my book, Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town, about Lancaster, Ohio. John and his wife, Wendy, had been struggling. She worked at a fast-food franchise. John was often out of work, or working one of a series of temporary jobs in places such as warehouses, loading or unloading trucks.

In November of 2015, while I was away from Lancaster, John called. He wanted some advice. He was considering getting in his car and driving three hours to Kentucky. He didn’t know anybody in Kentucky, and he wasn’t sure just where he might find a job. He couldn’t afford a motel, at least not for long, but, he told me, he could sleep in his car just fine, for a while anyway. The Oatneys owned a house, a tiny bungalow. It carried a mortgage. Wendy could stay there while he looked for work in Kentucky, he said.

“What then?” I asked John. “Suppose you find a job.”

“I could rent a room,” John answered. Wendy could stay in Lancaster to keep working her job and take care of their bungalow.

John knew he couldn’t sell the house. Not only did it need some serious repairs, but given the housing market in town, he’d be lucky to sell it for $40,000. So he’d reconciled himself to living apart from Wendy.

“Why Kentucky?” I asked John.

As it happened, John’s minister in Lancaster was acquainted with a minister in Kentucky, and John hoped his churchman might intercede with the Kentucky colleague to provide help in John’s job search there. It all seemed far too sketchy. I pictured John, alone, sleeping in his car with winter coming.

While Brooks and the others never said moving would be easy, there are questions that they don’t seem to answer: Move to where? To do what? For somebody like John, the work opportunities in Ohio look much the same as they do in Kentucky. John has stocked shelves in an Ohio Home Depot and figured he might be able to land a job stocking shelves in a Kentucky Home Depot. This was not going to represent a vast improvement in John’s circumstances.

Indeed, one theory economists have explored is that the American economy has become “flatter.” As Mai Dao, Davide Furceri, and Prakash Loungani wrote in a 2014 International Monetary Fund working paper, “states’ labor market conditions have been increasingly less dispersed/more similar during normal times.” Whether, or how much, this accounts for a decline in migration is debated, but as the economists Greg Kaplan and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl wrote in a 2012 research paper, “labor markets around the country have become more similar in the returns they offer to particular skills, so workers need not move to a particular place to maximize the return on their idiosyncratic abilities.”

“Idiosyncratic abilities” are one reason why the highly-educated, despite moving less often than they once did, still move around the country more often than those with a high-school degree (or sometimes even a bachelor’s). Someone who specializes in an esoteric but critical field—someone who holds, say, a doctorate in biology—can likely move from city to city more or less at will, while earning ever higher pay. Such a worker will always be in demand. But anybody with a healthy back can do the kinds of jobs John had been doing.

Besides, moving to another state comes with several costs. According to a model developed by the University of Wisconsin economists John Kennan and James R. Walker, those costs can be very high. There’s the obvious expense of moving. On top of that, a move to a more-prosperous area will likely mean a substantial increase in the cost of rent or homeownership, even if a mover’s earnings edge up only a little.

Plus, leaving a town means leaving a community behind. John and Wendy had family, friends, and church acquaintances in and around Lancaster, many of whom had helped the couple at one time or another. John had a job counselor who helped him find work. Wendy had a job. A local charity called Loving Lending had helped them rid themselves of high-interest debt. So while they didn’t have much money, they did have a fair amount of social capital.

That provides comfort as well as financial benefits. A single mother whose own mother helps watch a child while she works would have to pay for childcare if she moved away. Somebody looking for a job might stand a better chance of finding one in a town where he or she had cousins, siblings, and friends who could keep their ears open and provide recommendations.

“It’s not a matter of getting a U-Haul,” Abigail Wozniak, an economist at the University of Notre Dame and a co-author of several migration studies, told me. “It’s a matter of skills, connections, and some other secret sauce that makes a relocation successful. Getting that whole package of things ... costs more than a U-Haul.”

There’s also the question of happiness. Maybe someone would make more money in some other city or town. But many people in Lancaster, Ohio, for example, love their town. Many are trying to rejuvenate it. Is that complacency, or positive civic duty?

The country’s declining migration is being attributed to laziness, a lack of moxie, though the people in Lancaster I know who work two or three jobs might disagree. The new push for Americans to hit the road smacks of resentment. People like John Oatney, and distressed towns, have become inconvenient reminders of the costs of modern capitalism. For years these same towns have been called “the heartland” and “real America,” often by those who supported the very free-market policies that damaged so many communities. Now, rather than confront the root causes, they’re telling people in the real America to pack up and leave.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.