Residential mobility and social capital

This paper empirically investigates the role of social capital in households' residential mobility behavior by considering its spatial dimension. This study focuses on a household's social ties with people living nearby, which we refer to as its "local social capital." Local social capital may deter residential mobility, because the resources stemming from them are location-specific and will be less valuable if a household moves. We conjecture that a household's possession of local social capital has a negative effect on its residential mobility, and this negative effect of local social capital may be stronger on long-distance mobility than on short-distance mobility. Our empirical investigation is based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We obtain evidence which is supportive of these conjectures. (C) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.