Social Integration Among Older in-Migrants in Nonmetropolitan Retirement Destination Counties

Abstract

Migration is closely associated with various life course transitions, and, as Longino (1990) and others have shown, retirement and migration are frequently linked. While the 2000 CPS showed that older persons tend to have a relatively low propensity to migrate (only 2.0 percent crossed county lines from 1995 to 2000 compared with 8.6 percent of persons aged 30–34), when they do move, they are more likely to move to nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) destinations.2 As a consequence, older persons have made a positive contribution to nonmetro population change in each decade since the 1960s. Regardless of the overall direction of metro to nonmetro migration—positive in the 1970s and 1990s and negative in the 1980s—more older persons have moved to nonmetro areas than in the opposite direction in each decade since the 1970s (Fulton et al., 1997).3 Counties with higher than average net in-movement of older persons are among the most rapidly and consistently growing types of nonmetro area. During the 1990s, for example, nonmetro counties with 15 percent or higher net in-migration of persons aged 60 or older grew by 28 percent compared with 8 percent for other nonmetro counties. Retirement destination counties, by definition, attract older migrants, but they also attract working-age persons who obtain jobs in economic activities induced by the in-flow of retirees (Johnson & Fuguitt, 2000). Hence, retirement migration has been an engine of nonmetro economic and demographic growth, and many states and localities have developed explicit strategies to attract retirees (Reeder, 1998; Stallman & Siegel, 1995). While a substantial amount of research has examined the geographic mobility of older Americans (De Jong et al., 1995; Litwak & Longino, 1987) and the social and economic effects of retiree migration on destination communities