MOTIVES AND THE GEOGRAPHIC-MOBILITY OF VERY OLD AMERICANS

The proposition that motives for migration are important in explaining geographic mobility of very old persons was explored in this study. D ata from the biennial 1984 through 1990 rounds of the Longitudinal Stu dy on Aging were used to predict the move/not-move behavior of a natio nally representative sample of noninstitutionalized respondents aged 7 0 years and over in 1984. Six motives for elderly migration were ident ified: health, affiliation, economic security, comfort, functional ind ependence, and getting on with life after a family crisis. When incorp orated within this motivational framework, reason-for-move data showed that health was not the dominant motive; responses were divided among the five other motive categories. The logistic regression analysis sh owed that increasing disability was positively related to mobility for respondents in only one of six motive categories. The results suggest that a motive-for-migration perspective broadens the debate on types of, and explanations for, migration behavior of noninstitutionalized v ery old Americans.