HOUSING ASPIRATIONS AND MIGRATION IN LATER LIFE: DEVELOPMENTS DURING THE 1980s

ABSTRACT This paper tests hypotheses concerning the differentation of early and late old age in the United Kingdom with reference to housing preferences and requirements and their translation into migrations. Evidence is drawn from the 1991 CB census and from a representative sample of elderly people in SE England. The sources demonstrate the continued elaboration of long‐distance, metropolitan‐decentralizing migrations around the age of retirement. Also shown are relatively high rates of residential mobility among people in their seventies and eighties. Most of their migrations are short distance, but nonetheless with a net redistribution effect that sustains urban decentralization at the oldest ages. There is no evidence of significant return migration to London at advanced ages. From the survey responses, distinctive housing dissatisfactions are identifies in early and late retirement of the disparities between the expressed dissatisfactions and motivations yield several insights into people's adjustment to their actual and anticipated experiences in old age, and illuminates the housing aspirations and achievements of the most recent cohort.