Mortgages and Migration

The term of the average home mortgage is five years. Meaning that in today's world the average American family packs up and moves every five years.

At first I was startled by that piece of information, but as I thought about it I realized that it fits in with another statistic. The average worker in the U.S. changes jobs every five years or less.

Which means... Americans are in nearly constant migration. I guess that fits when I consider early American history of wagon trains and taming the wild west.

Still, it seems a change from shorter term history. As a kid my impression was that families pretty much stayed put. Oh sure, there was the occasional family that moved in or out of the neighborhood. But for the most part I could count on seeing the same neighbors day after day.

Maybe that's just because I was a kid and one year (let alone five) seemed like a good chunk of eternity.

Then again I don't think so. Certainly a new kid showing up in school was the exception rather than the norm. If families had been moving every five years back then, my graduating class would have been a whole different set of kids than I had known in junior high.

So what's changed? What has Americans in a constant search? And what is it they're searching for?