Older persons prefer to age in place or stay put in their current dwellings and move less frequently than any other age group. However, current residential mobility theories do not fully account for these preferences and behaviors because they focus on why older people move rather than on why they remain in their dwellings and do not consider the temporal or human developmental context of these residential decisions. It is essential to understand why older persons are reluctant to move because their ability to age successfully—have healthy, independent, active, and enjoyable lives—depends on where they live. When they stay put, they also rely more on family caregivers and paid home care providers to maintain their independence, rather than on the supportive services offered by senior group facilities, such as assisted living. They demand more home modification and financial service products, and their residential decisions influence the supply of housing that younger populations can potentially buy or rent. This paper's theoretical analysis proposes that Carstensen's socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), a lifespan theory of motivation, improves our understanding of why older persons age in place—either in their dwellings or more broadly in their communities. It offers an alternative interpretation of how life-changing events, such as retirement, lower incomes, spousal death, physical limitations, and health declines, influence their residential decisions. Whereas residential mobility theories view these transitions as disruptions that change the appropriateness or congruence of where older people live, SST proposes that older persons perceive these events as signs or cues that they are closer to death and must differently prioritize their goals and emotional experiences. Feeling their time is “running out,” older persons are motivated to stay put because moving requires preparations that are physically and emotionally trying and they are able to adapt to their current housing shortcomings. Their residential environments are now also a source of difficult-to-replace positive emotions and provide them with a supportive network of intimate and reliable interpersonal relationships. It is challenging for them to learn how to safely and efficiently conduct their usual activities and routines in another location and to establish new residential attachments and social connections. They would benefit from any net positive emotional payoffs only in a distant future, an unattractive prospect when they perceive a limited time left to live. Empirical studies must test the theoretical propositions presented in this paper. However, the disproportionally large projected future growth of the age 75 and older population with a heightened awareness of their limited time left to live should be a strong rationale for such investigations.

与其他年龄组相比，老年人更喜欢就地养老或留在目前的住所，并且搬家频率较低。然而，当前的居住流动理论并没有完全解释这些偏好和行为，因为它们关注的是老年人搬家的原因，而不是他们留在住所的原因，并且没有考虑这些居住决策的时间或人类发展背景。理解为什么老年人不愿意搬家是很重要的，因为他们成功老龄化的能力——拥有健康、独立、积极和愉快的生活——取决于他们居住的地方。当他们留在原地时，他们也更多地依赖家庭护理人员和付费家庭护理人员来保持独立性，而不是依赖高级团体设施提供的支持服务，例如辅助生活。他们需要更多的房屋改造和金融服务产品，他们的居住决定影响年轻人可能购买或租赁的住房供应。本文的理论分析提出，卡斯滕森的社会情感选择理论（SST）是一种动机的寿命理论，它提高了我们对老年人原地衰老的理解——无论是在他们的住所还是更广泛的在他们的社区。它对改变生活的事件（例如退休、收入降低、配偶死亡、身体限制和健康状况下降）如何影响他们的居住决定提供了另一种解释。尽管居住流动理论将这些转变视为改变老年人居住地的适当性或一致性的干扰，但 SST 提出，老年人将这些事件视为他们更接近死亡的迹象或线索，必须以不同的方式优先考虑他们的目标和情感体验。老年人感觉自己的时间“不多了”，因此有动力留在原地，因为搬家需要在身体和情感上做好准备，而且他们能够适应目前住房的缺点。他们的居住环境现在也是难以替代的积极情绪的源泉，并为他们提供了亲密而可靠的人际关系的支持网络。对于他们来说，学习如何在另一个地方安全有效地进行日常活动和例行公事以及建立新的居住依附和社会联系是一项挑战。只有在遥远的未来，他们才会从任何净积极的情感回报中受益，当他们意识到生命所剩无几时，这种前景就不具吸引力了。实证研究必须检验本文提出的理论命题。然而，预计 75 岁及以上人口的未来增长会不成比例地大幅增加，并且人们越来越意识到自己的生命有限，这应该是进行此类调查的有力理由。