Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 50, Issue 6 S395-S404, Copyright © 1995 by The Gerontological Society of America
Motive and the geographic mobility of very old Americans
GF De Jong, JM Wilmoth, JL Angel and GT Cornwell
Population Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, USA.
The proposition that motives for migration are important in explaining
geographic mobility of very old persons was explored in this study. Data
from the biennial 1984 through 1990 rounds of the Longitudinal Study on
Aging were used to predict the move/not-move behavior of a nationally
representative sample of noninstitutionalized respondents aged 70 years and
over in 1984. Six motives for elderly migration were identified: health,
affiliation, economic security, comfort, functional independence, and
getting on with life after family crisis. When incorporated within this
motivational framework, reason-for-move data showed that health was not the
dominant motive; responses were divided among the five other motive
categories. The logistic regression analysis showed that increasing
disability was positively related to mobility for respondents in only one
of six motive categories. The results suggest that a motive-for-migration
perspective broadens the debate on types of, and explanations for,
migration behavior of noninstitutionalized very old Americans.
