Demographic and socioeconomic aspects of elderly migration in the 1980s

The availability of data from the Current Population Survey for each year makes it possible to monitor the migration behavior of the population on a year-to-year basis and facilitates efforts to detect changes in long-standing patterns of behavior. The data used in this article come from the published reports summarizing the results of the March administration of the Current Population Survey over a decade, and, in general, deal with the movement of persons during the 12-month interval immediately preceding the survey. Trends and changes in some of the principal aspects of migration behavior among the elderly are reviewed and summarized, focusing on the demographic, social, geographic, and economic dimensions. Also considered are differences in migration behavior along these dimensions from a temporal perspective as well as in comparison to the migration behavior of the younger population. When possible, the article provides insight on behavioral differences among the various age categories within the older population, differentiating between the youngest and oldest components of the group and recognizing the striking differences between the youngest and oldest members of the older population in nearly all aspects of the migration process.