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Show Many Families Move to New Home Each Year In Grandpa's day the family experienced the thrill of a lifetime life-time when they finally acquired a home of their own. Today, young married couples accept home ownership quite calmly and they are also prepared . to move almost as calmly from one home to another, if the circumstances circum-stances . call for it. "Americans are a nation of movers, impatient with a limited environment, ambitious to find better opportunities in greener pastures," says the Commission of Labor Statistics. A good deal has ben learned about the mobility mo-bility of our population since the Census Bureau began keeping a statistical eye on the way families fami-lies move about the country, and even in the same neighborhood. Move they certainly do. Last . year, for example, about one out of five married couples changed their address. While most simply move to a place near where they lived before, a sizeable number of families go to another county in the same state, or even beyond, be-yond, to a different state altogether. alto-gether. The families who cross state lines take the bigges step of all, and not merely in the miles they traverse It takes a lot of courage on the part of a husband and wife as well as older children, to pull up stakes and go to live in a distant state, knowing -they will have to make new friends, perhaps have to become accustomed accus-tomed to a different climate in effect, start all over again. Younger people do the most moving, particularly those under 35 years old. After this age the ; proportion of couples who move drops off; by 35 most families have put down roots in the community, com-munity, and it actualy becomes physically difficult to pick up and go because of home ownership, owner-ship, friendships and because the children are in school. Besides there is the practical consideration considera-tion that the family breadwinner is established in his job or business. He and his wife are understandably relucant about giving up security he has built in his work over the years. A major reason why families do move is connected with the father's job. What is more, there is a relationship between families fami-lies who move and the father's education: better educated persons per-sons tend to be mobile than the others. As one U. C. Census survey sur-vey shows, only 4 per cent of those who had not gone beyond grade school moved compared to 6 per cent of high school graduates gradu-ates and 10 per cent of college graduates. Another group of amilies has moved because the father has prospered in a city job, and the family buys a home in the suburbs sub-urbs or beyond. The families of "organization men" constitue another an-other group of movers executives execu-tives or specialists who are transferred trans-ferred by their employers to a different locality hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away. Although the expense of the move may be assumed by the company, these families, like" others, still face the problem of social adjustment. As often happens, hap-pens, it is the wife and children who pave the way to new social friendships in the neighborhood. Apparently there will always be a substantial number of families fami-lies moving each year in the future, as they have been doing for the past 10 years and more. |