Americans on the move, 5-year study indicates

Young people often move because of college or jobs, one expert said.
DENVER (AP) -- Angela Weber has had four addresses since moving to Colorado from a small town in South Dakota eight years ago, but she's not ready to put the moving boxes away just yet.
Less than a month after buying a home east of Boulder, the 32-year-old special education teacher is already planning her next move. In three to five years she hopes to be married and starting a family -- and moving into another, bigger house.
She's not alone. In the last five years of the 20th century, 46 percent of the U.S. population moved to another home, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. That figure includes 7.5 million people who moved to America from abroad.
The bureau found that most moves weren't very far, with nearly one-quarter of the country's 262.4 million people age 5 and older moved to a new address in the same county.
Nevada, the fastest-growing state in the last decade, had the highest percentage of transplants, 63 percent. Colorado and Arizona both had 56 percent.
What's not included
The study, culled from responses to the 2000 head count, didn't include an age breakdown or a look at why people moved. But the type of move typically depends on a person's age, said John Logan, sociologist at the State University of New York at Albany.
Long-distance moves are most common among people from their late teens to early 30s, primarily for college or a better job, he said.
"Long-distance moves have generally been about making a significant change in your life and hoping to build a better future, and that has been especially the case for young adults who are free to do that," he said.
People in their mid-30s through 50s with children tend to make more short-distance moves in search of a bigger home or quieter neighborhood, he noted, while those in their 60s and older move to warm-weather climates or closer to family members after retirement.
The data also showed the South attracted the most transplants -- 1.8 million more than moved out of the region -- while the West stayed about even and the Northeast and Midwest saw declines.
What's changed
Warm-weather destinations in the South and West that were unattractive decades ago are now more livable because of technology and upgraded infrastructure systems, said Robert Lang, a demographer at the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, Va.
"Air conditioning and the interstate highway system defeated the remoteness of these places," Lang said.
At Two Men and a Truck moving company in Denver, business is up 50 percent over last year as people capitalize on lower interest rates to buy a first home or move up, operations manager Fred Gonzales said.
Four years ago, his crews moved a man into a home in suburban Arvada. Today, they were moving him out of that home to temporary housing while he builds his dream house in Arvada.
"We get to move them three times, from their apartment to their condo to their homes. And we'll probably see them again," said Gonzales, who has moved four times himself since coming to Colorado from Lubbock, Texas, in 1995.
Most movers
The data showed communities near military bases and college towns have the highest proportion of movers, led by the Jacksonville, N.C., metropolitan area at 46 percent. That area includes the Camp Lejeune Marine base.
It was followed by Bryan-College Station, Texas, which includes Texas A & amp;M University, and Lawrence, Kan., home to the University of Kansas.
States in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Deep South had the highest proportion of people living in the state in which they were born, which includes people who moved away and then returned.
Only 21 percent of Nevada residents were born there, the lowest percentage in the country, followed by Florida and Arizona.
Louisiana had the highest percentage of residents who are natives, with nearly 80 percent, followed by Pennsylvania and Michigan.
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