Why Americans REALLY Stopped Moving

In 1965, about one American in five moved house in a single year. Not once in a lifetime: every year. Today it's about one in thirteen. In 2023, fewer Americans moved than in 1948, even though the country had more than twice as many people. Ask why, and you'll hear the same answers: houses got too expensive, mortgage rates have everyone trapped, the country got older. This documentary lines those explanations up against the government's own moving records, kept since 1948, and most of them fall apart on the dates. We go from Tocqueville's restless Americans and New York's old May 1 "Moving Day", through the GI Bill, Levittown and the corporate-transfer era of The Organization Man, to the long slowdown that began in the 1970s and fell off a cliff after 2000. Then we test the usual suspects one by one, and look at what the research actually points to: fewer job changes, jobs that look the same in every city, boomtowns that put down roots, life events that come later, and the short move across town to the next house up that Americans mostly stopped making. How many houses had you lived in by the time you were 18? And did you end up staying put? Tell us in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 Saturday Morning, 1965 1:23 A Nation of Movers 3:24 The Moving Machine 7:01 Who Moved 7:59 The Long Slowdown 10:13 The Usual Suspects 14:57 What Actually Changed 18:41 Stuck, or Settled? 20:06 The Van in the Driveway Mover rates are the share of Americans aged 1 and over who lived in a different home a year earlier. 1972–75 and 1977–80 have no comparable yearly data and are shown dashed. Archive images: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Open Access), Library of Congress (Farm Security Administration; National Photo Company), U.S. National Archives (EPA DOCUMERICA), U.S. Census Bureau, IRS, The White House (archived). Music: original score. #History #AmericanHistory #Housing