Throughout American history there has almost always been at least one central economic narrative that gave the ambitious or unsatisfied reason to pack up and seek their fortune elsewhere. For the first 300 or so years of European settlement, the story was about moving outward: getting immigrants to the continent and then to the frontier to clear the prairies, drain the swamps and build new cities.

By the end of the 19th century, as the frontier vanished, the U.S. had a mild panic attack. What would this vibrant, entrepreneurial country be without new lands to conquer? Some people (I’m looking at you, Teddy Roosevelt) decided to keep on conquering (Cuba, the Philippines, etc.), but eventually, in industrialization, the U.S. found a new narrative of economic mobility at home. From the 1890s to the 1960s, people moved from farm to city, first in the North and then in the South. In fact, by the 1950s, there was enough prosperity and white-collar work that many began to move to the suburbs. As the population aged, there was also a shift from the cold Rust Belt to the comforts of the Sun Belt. We think of this as an old person’s migration, but it […]