Sources of geographic mobility among professional workers: A multivariate analysis

Summary Using the 1960 Census of Population one-in-a-thousand sample, this study investigates determinants of geographic mobility among professional, technical, and kindred workers. Multiple regression analysis reveals that age accounts for most of the explained variance in mobility, followed by income, education, regional location, sex, family size, and marital status. Additional variables—class of worker, race, nativity, professional type, size of place and industry—add no significant increments to explained variance. More specifically, low income and high education stimulate mobility and increases in family size and age slacken it. Young married professionals move the most and farthest, males somewhat more than females. Mobility is greatest in the West, least in the Northeast. Age reduces or reverses contrasts between single and married, large and small families, high and low incomes, little and much education, and residents of East and West. Factor analysis suggests that migration is part of two orderly processes—occupational career mobility and family life cycle. The bearing of these findings on the relationship between geographic mobility and social integration for the middleclass in the United States is considered.