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Some people are content with what they have in life and are not driven by a need to always strive for more. For these people, feeling like you "belong", in a p

Some people are content with what they have in life and are not driven by a need to always strive for more. For these people, feeling like you "belong", in a place with your family and friends are nearby is more important than better career opportunities. I don't know why this is regarded as such a mystery.

wutbrodo 8y ago
If you read the article, one of the primary things it focuses on is: to what we should attribute the _decline_ of geographic labor mobility. If you're going to claim that it's obviously "wanting to feel like you belong", you need a simple theory for why the desire to stay put would have increased, especially during a period when the incentives to move have grown dramatically (i.e., the "opportunity gap"). In particular, the article quite obviously isn't wondering why every single resident of rural Ohio hasn't packed up and moved to Manhattan. They're wondering why (to take the county they focused on), a smaller chunk of the 64% of unemployed adults in Adams County, has left than would have in the past. Not to mention the fact that we're not talking about striving for more: in most severe cases, the individual economic issues aggregate to municipal ones, which can affect quality of life fairly significantly. Just off the top of my head, the article mentioned increasingly understaffed gov't, plummeting school funding, and an increasingly strained law-enforcement and judicial system. Again, if you actually bothered to read the article, it's not a question of why people aren't striking out from their cozy suburban life to take their shot in the big city. It's focusing on why the number of people willing to leave dying local economies has declined so sharply. As part of the article puts it, there's been a reversal in the correlation between poverty and geographic labor mobility, from positive to negative. Again, I recommend reading the article posted (it's the link at the top of the comments page), and maybe you'l understand a little better what's being discussed here and what the "mystery" in question is.
gerbilly 8y ago
>feeling like you "belong", in a place with your family and friends are nearby is more important than better career opportunities. And is more predictive of happiness too.

wutbrodo 8y ago

If you read the article, one of the primary things it focuses on is: to what we should attribute the _decline_ of geographic labor mobility. If you're going to claim that it's obviously "wanting to feel like you belong", you need a simple theory for why the desire to stay put would have increased, especially during a period when the incentives to move have grown dramatically (i.e., the "opportunity gap"). In particular, the article quite obviously isn't wondering why every single resident of rural Ohio hasn't packed up and moved to Manhattan. They're wondering why (to take the county they focused on), a smaller chunk of the 64% of unemployed adults in Adams County, has left than would have in the past. Not to mention the fact that we're not talking about striving for more: in most severe cases, the individual economic issues aggregate to municipal ones, which can affect quality of life fairly significantly. Just off the top of my head, the article mentioned increasingly understaffed gov't, plummeting school funding, and an increasingly strained law-enforcement and judicial system. Again, if you actually bothered to read the article, it's not a question of why people aren't striking out from their cozy suburban life to take their shot in the big city. It's focusing on why the number of people willing to leave dying local economies has declined so sharply. As part of the article puts it, there's been a reversal in the correlation between poverty and geographic labor mobility, from positive to negative. Again, I recommend reading the article posted (it's the link at the top of the comments page), and maybe you'l understand a little better what's being discussed here and what the "mystery" in question is.

gerbilly 8y ago

>feeling like you "belong", in a place with your family and friends are nearby is more important than better career opportunities. And is more predictive of happiness too.