Most millennials, especially Latinos and Black people, are staying close to home. What does that mean for economic opportunity?
More than two-thirds of young adults in the United States live close to the homes they grew up in, a new Census Bureau and Harvard University study found, with
More than two-thirds of young adults in the United States live close to the homes they grew up in, a new Census Bureau and Harvard University study found, with Latinos, Black people and those from low-income families who left home only moving a short distance away.
According to one of the report’s authors, the findings, which were released Monday, show that economic opportunities for Hispanic and Black young adults, as well as those from low-income families, are closer to home, because those groups are less likely to move farther away.
“One of the questions is if someone provides lots of job opportunities in a given city, do the benefits of those policies go to people who grew up there, or do people who come from other places benefit from that?” Harvard doctoral student Ben Sprung-Keyser said in a phone interview with NBC News. “This tells us that most of the people who benefit are people who grew up there.”
“Locally-targeted policies can have locally-targeted effects, and that should impact how we think about making local investments,” he said. The research “tells us something about the effectiveness of local investment policy.”
By the age of 26, 69% of young adults lived in the commuting zone they grew up in; 80% had migrated less than 100 miles; 90% had moved less than 500 miles.
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