Shall we live here? Yeaaah, nah.
New Zealanders are more non-committal about location than ever, according to a recent survey on internal migration.
Results showed that we are more likely to up roots than residents of any other country with 26 per cent of Kiwis making the move from one city to another over five years.
Researchers from Gallup said the most common internal migrants, on a worldwide scale, are young adults.
This observation also rings true specifically for New Zealanders with 28 per cent of adults between the ages of 15 and 29 reporting a move within their country in the past five years.
By the age of 50, this likelihood is less than half as high (9 per cent).
“‘Migration is often associated with the search for better educational opportunities, and across most regions, adults with higher education are more likely to be internal migrants,” said Gallup.
“Worldwide, those with at least a college education are more than twice as likely (13 per cent) to say they moved internally in the past five years as those with primary education or less (five per cent).”
The United States, Finland and Norway follow closely behind us in terms of mobility with 24, 23 and 22 per cent relocating between cities.
Other countries which have seen high levels of internal migration include war-torn and poverty-stricken nations such as Syria and Malawi, where more than a fifth of the population has moved cities.
However, the study shows that on the whole, people in richer countries seem to be more likely to move home than residents of the developing world – in China and Venezuela, for example, fewer than five per cent of people have moved.
“The study surveyed 236,865 adults in 139 countries representing than 97 per cent of the world’s adult population, ‘enabling a reliable global estimate,'” said Gallup.
