Variations in Access to Social Support: the Effects of Residential Mobility and Spatial Proximity to Kin and Family

Increasing residential mobility is said to challenge existing social support systems as mobility raises geographic distances between family members. Since family social support is essential for health and well-being, this study investigates whether residential mobility affects familial social support following changes in proximity to family and kin. By applying a stepwise linear regression on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study, this paper is looking at variations between different residential mobility trajectories regarding social support provision and spatial proximity to family members in Germany over a 10-year period. Our findings show that people who are moving within Germany are receiving significantly more social support from their family and kin, while internationally mobile respondents receive less compared to non-mobile people. Mediation analyses show that proximity to family and kin are accounting for the negative effect of international mobility on social support but cannot explain the positive effect of internal migration.