Geographical mobility: March 1985 to March 1986.

This report provides detailed statistics on the geographical mobility of Americans, using data from the March 1986 Current Population Survey. The annual rate of moving declined to 18.6% during the 1985-1986 period, down from 20.2% for the previous period. This decline is due to a drop in the rate of local moving (within the same county) from 13.1% to 11.3%. The rate of moving from 1 state to another remained at about 3% per year, while the rate of moving between countries within the same state was 3.7%. Neither the Midwest nor the South had a significant change in population through internal migration for the 1985-1986 period. This was a deviation from the usual pattern of net migration losses for the Midwest and net migration gains for the South. Metropolitan areas in the aggregate gained population (+633,000) at the expense of nonmetropolitan areas. However, the central cities of metropolitan areas lost population to both nonmetropolitan and the suburbs (-1,366,000 persons), while the suburbs gained population from both of the other types of areas (+1,999,000).