The American obsession with homeownership–as a status marker, as a rite of passage, as a means of ensuring social stability–is surely some small part of the mess we’re in, so it seems worth revisiting this 2002 Claude Fischer paper.
Sociologists and public intellectuals alike often assert that Americans’ increasing residential mobility is a major contributor to the social and emotional difficulties that American families faced at the close of the twentieth century. But this assertion is founded on a false assumption. American residential mobility, commonplaces about “modern rootlessness” notwithstanding, has not increased. (Also, it is not clear that typical mobility does cause problems.) Mobility has decreased, both in long run, since the mid-nineteenth century, and in the short run, since the mid-twentieth century. This is not a startling new discovery. It is well-known to social historians and demographers (I have reported it a few times in print myself), but seems unknown to the general public and to many scholars.
Why are so few people aware of this? Fischer thinks the idea of increasing rootlessness accomodates a “grand narrative of modernization” latent in various academic disciplines. Mobility is assumed to be a feature of modern life, and realities of modern life are to be lamented. What would we call “stability” if morose social commentators were aware of Fischer’s data? I think we’d call it “inertia.”
Consider a few facts regarding Western affluent societies: Our life span has increased over this period; social, moral, and sexual mores have been deconstructed significantly, reinvented, and reimagined a number of times; and the pressure to produce as well as actual output of progeny has decreased in our cannon of civic imperatives. This combined with the increase in prosperity as well as the decrease in the cost of goods and services make finding permanent property less of a necessity. It seems to me a matter of cost/benefit trade-off. Because most young professionals seek a life that makes it necessary to be somewhat nomadic, and because it is relatively cheap, easy, and viable to do so – such is a reasonable cost for possible great future success (where as in the past, future success for many in similar economic brackets meant living to thirty without dying from pneumonia or childbirth).
There are other benefits to homeownership than fulfilling the desire for status or stability. When conducted with appropriate financial risk/debt, it can be one of the surest ways to wealth building and social mobility.
A difference in the residential mobility that exists today, compared to other periods, is that it tends to be individuals or single family units. And rather than moving once the often move several times.
Looking at past migrations, westward expansion, emigration from Europe (and other locals) or the emptying of the mid-west during the Great Depression, the migrants moved in groups of friends/families up to full sub sets of their home communities. Despite the move they brought and were part of a stabilizing group.
For middle class families, home ownership has historically provided an investment, forced savings and social stability. But historically also, there was economic stability that allowed generations to work in the same industries often side-by-side.
Today that has changed and with changes in the economy the home becomes an impediment to economic relocation. But so does comparatively low rents and other cost of living factors.
I noticed that this is not the first time you write about the topic. Why have you decided to touch it again?