Video: Most Americans live surprisingly close to their mothers

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Most Americans live within 25 miles of their mothers, according to a report issued by the University of Michigan Retirement Research Center. The study calls into question a widespread belief that when children grow up, they're likely to move far away and not be on hand to help out when their mothers get older. The analysis is based on a nationally representative sample of married and single adults age 25 and over from the National Survey of Families and Households and on data from the U.S. Census. The probability that individuals live close to their mothers is strongly related to education, according to researchers Janice Compton and Robert Pollak, who conducted the analysis for the U-M Retirement Research Center, part of the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "Adult children with college degrees are much less likely to live with or near their mothers," said Pollak, who co-authored a working paper titled "Proximity and Coresidence of Adult Children and their Parents: Description and Correlates." For example, among couples who both have college degrees, about 50 percent live more than 30 miles from both their mothers and only 18 percent live within 30 miles of both mothers. Among couples who have no college degree, the situation is reversed: about 19 percent live more than 30 miles from both their mothers and 50 percent live within 30 miles of both their mothers. "If you go to college, you're more likely to work away from the place you grew up," Compton said.