Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The purpose of this research was to study the influences upon the volume and geographical patterns of retirement migration. The research supplemented earlier studies by the authors and Valerie Karn (who had investigated the circumstances of migrants in Clacton and Bexhill), from which the basic characteristics of retired migrants were known: they were overwhelmingly owner-occupiers before and after the move, largely in social class II and III, from white collar occupations with medium to high incomes, and from small households. Married couples without others were much over-represented.

Main Topics:

This survey focuses on housing, personal and family circumstances, residential and migration histories to specify further distinctive characters of movers

(1) Movers: Two stage areally stratified random, viz. random samples of households in selected enumeration districts in two regions, the latter selected and weighted to represent the original areas of all retirement migrants. (2) Non-movers: Two stage areally stratified quota, viz. random samples with some point sampling in selected enumeration districts in Manchester and London. Quotas on pre-retirement housing tenure, house- size and socio-economic status were determined by the characteristics of the movers.

Face-to-face interview