Mobility Patterns of Older Homeowners: Are Older Homeowners Trapped in Distressed Neighborhoods?

Using multiyear data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics geo-code match file, the authors confirm that older homeowners were substantially less likely to move during the 1970s than younger homeowners. But unlike younger homeowners, older homeowners were also less likely to move from a distressed neighborhood than from a secure one. Of the population of older homeowners alive in 1980 who had lived in a permanently distressed neighborhood in 1970, only about 1 in 10 had moved to a secure neighborhood in the intervening 10 years. Younger homeowners in similar neighborhoods were three times more likely to have done so.