The decision to leave your hometown is always a big one.
Some choose to up sticks for a change of scenery, many to chase a career, while others are driven by a desire for personal growth.
And while certain teenagers can’t wait to move to a different city, we all know people who have lived in the same place their whole life.
Now, a report reveals the exact age by which ‘clever’ people have moved away from home.
According to the team from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, 59 per cent of the highest school achievers brought up outside of London leave their hometown by the age of 32.
Xiaowei Xu, a senior research economist 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.’
For the study, the team tracked people who scored in the top five per cent of GCSE results.
They collected data on where these people went on to live over the next several decades.
Their analysis uncovered a clear link between ‘cleverness’ and what age people had left their hometown.
Graduates flocked to the capital during their mid-20s, early in their careers, according to the team.
By the age of 32, the study found, a quarter of young workers who scored top GCSEs lived in London, though only 13 per cent had grown up there.
Another 14 per cent lived in ‘Travel to Work Areas’ (TTWA) near London, meaning overall, 40 per cent of top achievers live in and around the capital.
The study found that after initially moving to London as a graduate, many people then leave the capital after several years – perhaps to find more affordable housing or to start to raise a family.
Popular areas to move to at this point in life include Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Surrey and Oxfordshire – all of which are in commutable distance of London.
‘While many people leave London in their early 30s, they tend to move to already-prosperous places in the South East,’ the report said.
‘The majority of these move onwards to a new TTWA rather than returning to their hometown.’
Those who do return home, the team found, ‘tend to be lower educated’.
Since half of onward movers from London relocate to nearby areas, the capital ‘fundamentally reshapes the spatial distribution of skills’, the report said, ‘bringing in talent from all over the country and pushing it into the South East’.
This pattern is not true of other cities, such as Manchester, they explained.
Statistics, published by the government, suggest that graduates can expect to earn £39,000 in London, £32,000 in the South West and £28,500 in the North East.
