IFS: Six in ten top achievers outside of London leave their home town by their early 30s

By age 32, nearly 6 in 10 (59%) of workers from outside London who were in the top 5% of GCSE scores have moved away from their home town. 30% of those who moved went to London.   

This is one of the findings of new research published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), funded by ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK), which shows that youth mobility responds to – and in turn shapes – regional differences in economic opportunities.  

Despite the recent focus on ‘levelling up', youth mobility has increased in recent years, with graduates born in 1997 being 8 percentage points more likely to live outside their home Travel to Work Area (TTWA) than similar graduates born in 1986. The analysis shows that mobility has risen more for workers from low-paying areas, which could be widening geographical divides.  

The research highlights London's enduring ability to draw and retain skilled workers, attracted by higher pay and faster pay growth, from other parts of the country. It finds that: 

• Graduates flock to London early on in their careers. The number of graduates living in London at age 27 is 46% higher than the number of people who grow up in London and get a degree (in the same cohorts). 

• By age 32, 26% of young workers in the top 5% of GCSE scores live in London, despite only 13% having grown up there. Another 14% live in TTWAs that border London – meaning that, overall, 40% of top achievers live in and around the capital. 

Whilst many people leave London in their early 30s, they tend to move to already-prosperous places in the South East. This means that mobility in people's early 30s does not reduce – and in fact exacerbates – regional divides. 

• One in three workers who moved to London in their 20s leave the capital by age 32. But the majority (62%) of these move onwards to a new TTWA rather than returning to their home town. Those who do return tend to be lower-educated. 

• Half of onward movers from London move to TTWAs that border London. In this way, London fundamentally reshapes the spatial distribution of skills, bringing in talent from all over the country and pushing it into the South East. 

• This is not true of other cities – for example Manchester mainly draws early-career workers from neighbouring areas, and they tend to move back to neighbouring areas in their early 30s. 

Xiaowei Xu, a Senior Research Economist at IFS and author of the report, said: 

‘Young people's choices on where to live respond to and reinforce regional inequalities. Talented people want good jobs – that are well matched to their skills, at productive firms that offer training and career development – and they'll move if they can't find them locally. This means that raising skills in left-behind places will not be enough to reduce economic disparities. We need to think about bringing opportunity to people – building places where skills are rewarded.'