Baby boomer migration and demographic change in US metropolitan areas

Abstract

In recent years, the popular media has suggested an emerging ‘back-to-the-city’ migration trend among baby boomers that are presumably electing to migrate to large cities and urban cores. These assertions conflict with the general association in the academic literature between retirement and migration to rural or non-metropolitan areas. This paper tests this ‘back-to-the-city’ hypothesis through aggregate-level analysis of Census data on baby boomer demographic trends and logistic regression modeling of the relationships between baby boomer demographics and their destination choices, using IPUMS ACS microdata. Analysis of Census data suggests that large metropolitan areas tended to lose baby boomers during the 2000s, and that high-growth areas for baby boomers are generally located in the outer suburbs of metropolitan areas; however, some neighborhoods very near to downtowns experienced significant growth as well. Logistic regression of baby boomer migrants’ destination choices suggests that retirement migration is still associated with moves away from large metropolitan areas; however, among within-metropolitan migrants, high levels of income and education are associated with moves downtown. As such, it appears that downtowns of large cities are emerging as an option for ‘amenity’ baby boomer migrants, and an alternative to the traditional rural destinations characteristic of retirement migration.

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