Income, Education, and Ethnicity African Americans and Hispanics move more often than whites in the United States, but they tend to move shorter distances. Between 1995 and 1996, the proportion of whites who moved was 16 percent compared to 19 percent for blacks and 23 percent for Hispanics. There is no simple link between residential mobility and income. The propensity to move depends more on the type of jobs people hold. Doctors, lawyers, and others who rely on local bases of operation have low rates of mobility, for example, while business executives are highly mobile.
Educational attainment is also related to mobility.
Those in the middle, people who complete high school but do not go on to college, have the lowest mobility rate. Hispanics have higher high school dropout rates than other major ethnic and racial groups, which helps explain their higher average mobility rates. The distance of moves differs by education. This helps explain why U.S. Hispanics and African Americans, who have lower average educational attainment than whites, make more short-distance moves than do whites. International Migration International migration is a worldwide phenomenon.