Measuring Residential Mobility: A Historical Overview of Novel Data and Methodological Approaches

This review paper analyzes the evolution of data sources, methods, and challenges in measuring residential mobility in the United States since the turn of the 20th century, focusing on attempts to measure these aspects of residential mobility: (i) its magnitude; (ii) its “why”; and (iii) its spatial and temporal context. The expansion of data and methods has been instrumental in the development of theoretical frameworks and the ability to interrogate key empirical questions over the decades. While imperfect, the recent growth in alternative sources of individual- and household-level mobility data promises to extend the frontiers of residential mobility research.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Journal of planning literature

• Publication date

  2025-11-12

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/08854122251382934
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Moving back: Spatial and demographic differences in boomeranging to parents

  2025cited by this paper
• Can New Housing Supply Mitigate Displacement and Exclusion?

  2024cited by this paper
• Does gentrification constrain housing markets for low-income households? Evidence from household residential mobility in the New York and San Francisco metropolitan areas

  2024cited by this paper
• The Promises and Perils of Racial Equity Planning

  2023cited by this paper
• Where Do They Go? The Destinations of Residents Moving from Gentrifying Neighborhoods

  2023cited by this paper
• The impact of hurricanes and floods on domestic migration

  2022cited by this paper
• The Geography of Gentrification and Residential Mobility

  2022cited by this paper
• Housing shortages and the new downturn of residential mobility in the US

  2021cited by this paper
• Household characteristics or neighborhood conditions? Exploring the determinants of housing spells among U.S. public housing residents

  2021cited by this paper
• Local Effects of Large New Apartment Buildings in Low-Income Areas

  2021cited by this paper
• Vulnerable City, recipient city, or climate destination? Towards a typology of domestic climate migration impacts in US cities

  2021cited by this paper
• Changing neighborhoods, shifting connections: mapping relational geographies of gentrification using social media data

  2021cited by this paper
• What is your definition of Big Data? Researchers’ understanding of the phenomenon of the decade

  2020cited by this paper
• Does gentrification displace poor children and their families? New evidence from medicaid data in New York City

  2020cited by this paper
• Measuring Displacement: Assessing Proxies for Involuntary Residential Mobility

  2020cited by this paper
• Forced to move: Patterns and predictors of residential displacement during an era of housing insecurity.

  2020cited by this paper
• Assessing the Intersection of Neighborhood Change and Residential Mobility Pathways for the Chicago Metropolitan Area (2006–2015)

  2019cited by this paper
• The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco

  2019cited by this paper
• Section 8 Vouchers and Rent Limits: Do Small Area Fair Market Rent Limits Increase Access to Opportunity Neighborhoods? An Early Evaluation

  2019cited by this paper
• The Effects of Gentrification on the Well-Being and Opportunity of Original Resident Adults and Children

  2019cited by this paper
• The Social Integration of American Cities: Network Measures of Connectedness Based on Everyday Mobility Across Neighborhoods

  2019cited by this paper
• Safety net? The use of vouchers when a place-based rental subsidy ends

  2018cited by this paper
• The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility I: Childhood Exposure Effects

  2018cited by this paper
• The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States

  2018cited by this paper
• How Do Changes In Housing Voucher Design Affect Rent and Neighborhood Quality

  2018cited by this paper
• Urban mobility and neighborhood isolation in America’s 50 largest cities

  2018cited by this paper
• Job Changing and the Decline in Long-Distance Migration in the United States

  2017cited by this paper
• Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics To Analyze Housing Decisions, Dynamics, and Effects.

  2016cited by this paper
• Negative home equity, economic insecurity, and household mobility over the Great Recession

  2016cited by this paper
• Credit Invisibles and the Unscored

  2016cited by this paper
• Re-thinking residential mobility

  2015cited by this paper
• The American Census: A Social History, Second Edition

  2015cited by this paper
• Forced Displacement From Rental Housing: Prevalence and Neighborhood Consequences

  2015cited by this paper
• NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE EFFECTS OF EXPOSURE TO BETTER NEIGHBORHOODS ON CHILDREN: NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE MOVING TO OPPORTUNITY EXPERIMENT

  2015cited by this paper
• Gentrification and Residential Mobility in Philadelphia.

  2015cited by this paper
• Making Good Neighbors: Civil Rights, Liberalism, and Integration in Postwar Philadelphia

  2014cited by this paper
• Internal Migration in Decline

  2013cited by this paper
• Segregating Shelter

  2013cited by this paper
• Big Data: Large-Scale Historical Infrastructure from the Minnesota Population Center

  2011cited by this paper
• Neighborhood Immigration and Native Out-Migration

  2011cited by this paper
• Who Moves to Mixed-Income Neighborhoods?

  2011cited by this paper
• Who Gentrifies Low-Income Neighborhoods?

  2010cited by this paper
• An Introduction to the FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel

  2010cited by this paper
• Adjustment Process in a System: A Behavioral Model of Human Movement*

  2010cited by this paper
• Race, Class, and Changing Patterns of Migration between Poor and Nonpoor Neighborhoods1

  2005cited by this paper
• Displacement or Succession?

  2005cited by this paper
• Gentrification and Displacement New York City in the 1990s

  2004cited by this paper
• Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?

  2002cited by this paper
• Ever‐More Rooted Americans

  2002cited by this paper
• The changing state of gentrification

  2001cited by this paper
• The Racial Context of White Mobility: An Individual-Level Assessment of the White Flight Hypothesis

  2000cited by this paper
• Restless Nation: Starting Over in America

  2000cited by this paper
• Migration Patterns and the Growth of High‐Poverty Neighborhoods, 1970‐‐19901

  1999cited by this paper
• Interpreting the dynamics of public housing: Cultural and rational choice explanations

  1998cited by this paper
• Escaping Distressed Neighborhoods: Individual, Community, and Metropolitan Influences

  1997cited by this paper
• The Dynamics of Housing Assistance Spells

  1996cited by this paper
• Migration segregation and the geographic concentration of poverty.

  1994cited by this paper
• PROINTEGRATIVE POLICY: Theory and Practice

  1993cited by this paper
• Migration and social mobility: South East England as an escalator region.

  1991cited by this paper
• Elderly Mobility and Mobility Outcomes

  1990cited by this paper
• Neighborhood revitalization and racial change: The case of Washington, D.C.

  1985cited by this paper
• Spatial Differentials in Residential Displacement

  1984cited by this paper
• Residential Mobility and Public Policy Issues: “Why Families Move” Revisited

  1982cited by this paper
• Residential Displacement: Extent, Nature, and Effects

  1982cited by this paper
• Residential Problems, Dissatisfaction, and Mobility

  1979cited by this paper
• Central City White Flight: Racial and Nonracial Causes.

  1979cited by this paper
• Neighborhood Revitalization and Displacement A Review of the Evidence

  1979cited by this paper
• Toward a Theory of Gentrification A Back to the City Movement by Capital, not People

  1979cited by this paper
• Middle Class Resettlement in Older Urban Neighborhoods: The Evidence and the Implications

  1979cited by this paper
• White movement to the suburbs: a comparison of explanations

  1979cited by this paper
• Intra- Urban Residential Mobility: A Review and Synthesis

  1977cited by this paper
• Housing Consumption Disequilibrium and Local Residential Mobility

  1976cited by this paper
• Residential satisfaction as an intervening variable in residential mobility

  1974cited by this paper
• Another Look at Residential Turnover in Urban Neighborhoods: A Note on "Racial Change in a Stable Community" by Harvey Molotch

  1971cited by this paper
• The Intra-Urban Migration Process: a Perspective

  1970cited by this paper
• A theory of migration

  1966cited by this paper
• The Changing Character of Negro Migration

  1965cited by this paper
• The Costs and Returns of Human Migration

  1962cited by this paper
• Population Redistribution Within Metropolitan Areas: Evaluation of Research

  1956cited by this paper
• Why Families Move

  1956cited by this paper
• Mental Disorders in Cities

  1942cited by this paper
• Ecological Interrelationships of Juvenile Delinquency, Dependency, and Population Mobility: A Cartographic Analysis of Data from Long Beach, California

  1936cited by this paper
• The Mobility of Urban Population a Study of Four Cities of 30,000 to 40,000 Population

  1933cited by this paper
• The Neighborhood: A Study of Local Life in the City of Columbus, Ohio. I.

  1921cited by this paper
• Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups With Particular Reference to the Negro

  1914cited by this paper
• The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study

  1900cited by this paper
• The Laws of Migration

  1885cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.