FROM THE editors October 18, 2004 Issue

Planning a move soon?

The British call it moving house. To Americans it's just moving. Nearly everyone agrees, though, that a change in residence can be among life's most stressful events. The BBC ranks moving to a new home fourth among "top stress makers," behind only the death of a loved one, divorce or separation, and personal injury or illness.

Looking at mobility on a wider screen, consider the situation in China. The rural-to-urban economic migration that's underway there strains the imagination in its magnitude. Over the past decade, 150 million Chinese jobseekers, predominantly in their teens and 20s, have moved from villages to urban centers. But even those millions are dwarfed by the expectation that as many as 800 million more Chinese citizens may be moving to cities such as Guangzhou (current population nearly 4 million) and Shanghai (already over 13 million) in coming years, according to The New York Times ("In a Tidal Wave, China's Masses Pour From Farm to City," Sept. 12, 2004).

Is it a case of apple boxes and orange crates to compare mobility issues in the West with the vast social and economic transformation that's underway in China? Not at the personal level. The stresses faced by anyone making a move to anywhere new probably are not all that different. And the Asia mobility scenario bears watching. As the Chinese economy merges into the global economic framework, stresses felt in China (a recession, for example) could ripple widely in world financial markets.

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