The number of US citizens moving home saw a dramatic drop in 2007-8 to 35.2m, the lowest figure since 1962

In most of the big western economies the global recession has brought a dramatic, if unsurprising, drop in the number of people moving house. For some nations that fall represents a paradigm shift; for others it is almost business as usual.

In his 2004 book Restless Nation, academic James M Jasper argued that what really sets Americans apart from other nations is that they are perennially on the move. In a typical year, according to the International Handbook on Internal Migration, about 20 per cent of US citizens move house (two-thirds of whom are homeowners). This compares with just 4 per cent in Germany and the Netherlands, 8 per cent in France and 9 per cent in the UK.

In April of this year, however, the US Census Bureau reported that the number of people who changed residences in 2007-8 declined to 35.2m: the lowest number since 1962, when the nation had 120m fewer people. Moves between states fell the most, a trend that has US analysts worried.

“It does show that the US population, often thought of as the most mobile in the developed world, seems to have stopped dead in its tracks due to a confluence of constraints imposed by a tough economic spell,” William H Frey of the Brookings Institute told the New York Times.

Contrast this with a decade or so ago when, at the end of a typical five-year period, only 53 per cent of the US population was living in the same place as at the start. Furthermore, whereas Europeans typically shuffle round the corner to a place with an extra bedroom, 24 per cent of relocating Americans travel vast distances.

Whether or not the current trend develops into a lasting drop in the number of people relocating, restlessness is central to the American psyche, says Jasper.

“The main force behind this restlessness was immigration,” he says. “Contrary to popular belief, very few of our immigrants have been refugees forced to flee their homes. Most had options and they chose America as the best of them. Once here, immigrants and their descendants – which is to say, almost all of us – continue to move about, associating physical relocation with self-improvement. That’s what the country was based on and thus it is in constant motion.”

Lana Wrightman, whose father was a ranching cowboy, spent most of her childhood “ping-ponging from ranch to ranch, mostly between Texas and Wyoming”. She reckons that by the time she reached her late teens she had clocked up about 20 separate homes (though some were short spells with relations) and gone to four different middle schools and two high schools. It was a restless childhood, driven both by necessity and by lifestyle aspirations, which she now views with mixed feelings.

“I never formed close friendships because I knew that I would be moving on in a short time,” Wrightman says. On the other hand, she thinks that not putting down deep roots made her more independent and adaptable, especially when it came to travelling as a graduate student to the UK.

Her contemporaries did not exhibit the same independence or ease of transition and were, she believes, the worse for it. “My first group of friends had lived a very rooted existence and were leaving home for the first time,” Wrightman says. “They found university very difficult and I found their close-knit, needy friendships claustrophobic to the point of suffocation.”

Now married and living in London, where she works in public relations, Wrightman has no intention of repeating her itinerant childhood. “I have this idea that the next house we move to will be our ‘forever house’ and we’ll never move again,” she says.

Wrightman’s British husband, Michael, had a more “old world” upbringing, having only moved house twice in his entire life and attending just one primary and one secondary school.

But if historic factors and the sheer size of the landmass forming the country and opportunities in the US make for very different demographic patterns from the UK, one shared lifestyle goal has set both countries in motion. “Moving up is really the main reason that Americans move around,” Jasper says. “They expect to advance, especially in terms of housing.”

Notwithstanding the current gloom hanging over the housing markets in both countries, UK and US nationals have one thing in common: they have ceased to see their homes just as places to live but instead view them as lifestyle commodities to be traded up in bull markets.

“In the UK we’ve seen huge migrations in recent years (2001-2006) from the south of England towards the north because there’s been such a high differentiation in regional house prices,” says Lucian Cooke of the research department at estate agency Savills. “People simply get better, bigger houses by trading out of London and they’ve done that en masse.”

The company’s studies, based on new registrations with general practitioner surgeries throughout the UK, showed that net migration from the north to the south of England peaked at about 70,000 in 1986. By 2004 the trend had reversed, with 38,000 leaving London and the south for the north. Such figures don’t take into account the considerable overseas immigration to London and the south-east, however.

A telling sign of the differing attitudes on either side of the north Atlantic is that the US government regards people’s willingness to move as key to the dynamism, flexibility and productivity of its economy and will allow them to offset their relocation costs against tax to take a new job.

The desire for self-improvement is also making its influence felt in mainland Europe. British-born Edward Goodier works in the Hamburg office of estate agency Engel & Völkers. He says young Germans are prepared to change location in order to advance their careers – especially from east to west.

“The most capable workers in the former east are the most willing to move to better job prospects in the west, where the majority of the service industries are based,” he says. “By contrast, most in the west are already surrounded by good career prospects.”

Intriguingly, Germans, who move house the least frequently of all Europeans, also have the lowest owner-occupancy rates: just 43 per cent, according to a recent survey by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical information service. The proportion is much lower in big cities such as Berlin, where only 11 per cent of the population are owner-occupiers. This compares with Spain at 82 per cent and the UK at 69 per cent. The survey found that 80 per cent of Germans would prefer to be owners than renters and that the younger generation is increasingly aware of property as a means of shoring up future wealth.

There is a historic reason for the high number of rentals in Germany: much of its housing stock was destroyed during the second world war and the shortage led to high prices. Large apartment buildings were provided as the solution and rental rates generally remained cheap and below the market value, even in desirable locations, because much of the property was state-owned. Many believe that such housing perks are no longer sustainable and that the percentage of homeowners will inexorably rise in line with the rest of Europe.

Yet in France there appears to be little evidence of people associating mobility with self-improvement. Parisienne Isabelle Biglier has moved only once in her life, when she married her husband, Philippe. Although she intends to upgrade to a larger apartment in the suburbs when she starts a family, for Biglier a house is a home and not a route to wealth or, necessarily, a better lifestyle.

“The average French profile is to move two or three times in a lifetime, with most people moving close to the Paris area in order to work and then looking to retire somewhere warmer, in the south,” she says. The local government administrator wonders if stringent workplace regulations and the numbers directly or indirectly employed by the state are key to why people stay put.

“There is still more of a job-for-life mentality here in France than in the UK, for instance, and I think that translates into a ‘house-for-life,’” she says, adding that this brings problems as well. “You do get a lot of hostility towards outsiders in communities that are very deeply rooted because they see it as a threat,” she observes.

Jasper cites the opposite case for the US. “Americans expect that at any stage of their lives they can move and will make friends immediately,” he says. “The US is composed of people who have only moved there recently themselves, so they are far more open. Retirees, especially ones who move to Florida, expect to go to church one Sunday and know everyone thereafter.”

American optimism for the future is often driven by anxiety, despair about the present, says Jasper. “Americans believe in their ideals and define themselves and their country by them, even if it means judging the present harshly. Americans live for what they can be rather than what they are. This is still the land of the dream.”

After Americans, “the other new world nationalities of Canada and Australia are the most on the move,” Jasper says. Australian Ian Austen, director of Austen Brothers shirtmakers, has lived and travelled extensively throughout Australia and Asia and also lived in London.

Now based in Sydney, he says: “Australians are raised with the idea that there’s a party going on somewhere else that we’re not invited to. Our European genes and the tyranny of distance made us believe, up until the 1950s, that our hearts were still English. Then that shifted to America. It makes Australians more restless and outward-looking, whereas the Brits are more inward-looking.”

Austen reckons that, in his lifetime, one of the biggest shifts in the national demographic is among blue-collar workers who have left the populous states of New South Wales and Victoria for Queensland.

“South-east Queensland has seen the largest population growth in Australia, based on the pursuit of better lifestyles,” Austen says. “Blue-collar and internet-based workers have liberated themselves from their desks or the factory floor, put their knapsacks on and gone somewhere warmer.”

Not that he feels that moving cities necessarily means a change of culture. “When I grew up, even moving inter-state gave you a completely foreign experience: you eat different food and drink a different beer. Now, highly efficient travel and global brands have turned Australia into one big monoculture. The lifestyle is not that different if you move or stay where you are.”