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Carol Faber
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                Moving Rate Among Americans Declines,
                         Census Bureau Says
                                

  About 16 percent (43 million) of U.S. residents moved from one home to
another between March 1997 and March 1998, a decline from the 16.5 percent
who moved during the previous one-year period, according to a report
released today by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.

  "Millions of Americans continue to relocate each year," said Kenneth
Prewitt, Census Bureau director. "It is our goal in next year's census to
count those on the move, to count them in the right location and to make
Census 2000 the most complete and accurate census ever."

  "In recent years, mobility rates have changed little or not at all and
in fact, the overall drop since the 1950s and 1960s has been only around 
4 percentage points," said Carol Faber, author of the report Geographical
Mobility: March 1997 to March 1998.

  Other highlights from the report, available on the Internet at
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/migrate.html, include:

--  Moving rates decline as people grow older: between March 1997 and
    March 1998, only 4 percent of those 65 and over moved while one-third
    of people ages 20 to 29 years old moved the highest rate of all age
    groups.

--  Of the 43 million movers, 27.1 million moved within the same county,
    7.9 million moved to another county in the same state and 6.4 million
    took up residence in a different state. Additionally, during that
    one-year period about 1.2 million people moved to the United States
    from abroad.

--  Non-Hispanic Whites had lower overall rates of moving (14.5 percent)
    than African Americans or Asians and Pacific Islanders (about 19 percent
    for each group). People of Hispanic origin, who may be of any race,
    had the highest rate of moving (21.2 percent).

--  One-third of America's renters moved between March 1997 and 
    March 1998. In contrast, only 8.2 percent of homeowners moved during
    that time.

--  The Northeast had the lowest overall moving rate (11.5 percent)  
    well below the national rate of 16.0 percent followed by the Midwest
    (14.7 percent), the South (17.2 percent) and the West (19.4 percent).

  Data are from the March 1998 Current Population Survey. Statistics from
sample surveys are subject to sampling and nonsampling error.