Marriage and mobility in Britain--secular trends in a nationwide sample.

Abstract

A nationwide sample survey of 2338 married couples provides information on the birthplaces and residences at meeting of couples first married between 1920 and 1960. Four measures of marital mobility are analysed according to year of marriage and year of first meeting. In their original form all measures show the expected increase in mobility from the 1920s to the 1930s with an exceptionally steep rise in the 1940s and a decline after the Second World War. The role of the war in promoting migration both of civilians and of soldiers is briefly reviewed. Women show rather different migration patterns from those of men. Age at marriage is positively correlated with movement in this sample, but a stronger association is provided by age at first meeting. Mobility averages for each cohort are adjusted for the changes in age at marriage, both real and peculiar to this sample, which have occurred since 1920, and also for variation in the population sizes of birthplaces in the sample over time, and changes in the relative frequencies of different socio-economic classes. After adjustment, little ghange is seen in material mobility over the four decades covered by the survey and many of the differences which do remain after adjustment lack statistical significance. Some socio-economic explanations are offered for these conclusions.