ABSTRACT
The United States is a mobile nation, with about 16 percent of its population changing residence each year (Schachter, 2001). Americans frequently think of residential mobility as a voluntary and opportunity-related behavior in which people choose to move in order to take advantage of social and economic opportunities at migration destinations, and this generality is accurate with respect to the movement of households with relatively high and stable socioeconomic status (Cadwallader, 1992). However, demographers have long noted that households at the wealthiest and poorest ends of the spectrum are most likely to be residentially mobile (Long, 1973; Nord, Luloff, & Jensen, 1995; Schachter, 2001). Unlike wealthier households, low-income families often move for largely unplanned and unpredictable reasons, including household crises such as family breakup, inability to pay rent, or movement away from unsafe, unaffordable or otherwise unacceptable living conditions (Fitchen, 1992, 1994; Schafft, 2005, 2006).
