Tied down or room to move? Investigating the relationships between housing tenure, employment status and residential mobility in Britain

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, we investigate the relationships between labour market dynamics, housing tenure and residential mobility. Panel data allow the study of the sequence of household moves and individual labour market status changes, enabling unique analysis of the relationship between job and residential mobility. Our findings suggest that the unemployed are more likely to move than employees. A desire to move motivated by employment reasons has the single largest positive impact on the probability of moving between regions.