People who move their place of residence are supposed to fill out the
National Change of Address (NCOA) form so mail can be fowarded.  Not
everyone does this. My local postmaster believes young people are far
less likely to fill out the NCOA than older people but could find no
numbers to support the hypothesis. What percentage of people under the
age of 30 (or any other age deemed "young")complete the NCOA and how
does that compare the population as a whole?

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Clarification of Question by davidwn-ga on 15 Sep 2002 21:42 PDT

Thank you, to the two commentators, very much for pointing to an
imprecision in my question. I am looking for the breakdown on who
fills out the Change of Address form for the Post Office (which is
then compiled into the NCOA database, apparently -- thanks for
clearing that up).  I realize the form is not mandatory and I suspect
that the reasons you site for not filling them out are accurate, but I
would like to see numbers on the breakdown of the type of people who
see fit to fill it out.  The site you linked to gives an interesting
breakdown of the type of change of address forms submitted which is a
good start. Thanks and I apologize for my mistake on terminology.

The direct marketing industry lives off the NCOA database, as it's
critical to controlling mailing costs.  About 5% of the population
moves each year in the United States and there are 285,000 moves per
week, according to MBSinsight.com, a market research company.

In an article titled "NCOA Processing Acknowledgment  Information"
from MBSinsight.com (undated), the research company says that the NCOA
database consists of:
114M names 
82.6% forwardable names
13.9% moved & left no address
2.6% PO box closings
0.2% move to foreign address

45% family moves
49% individual moves
6% business moves

The MBSinsight article is here:
http://www.mbsinsight.com/ncoa/pdfform/paf_package.pdf

But despite the heavy use of the NCOA database to clean up direct mail
lists, there's surprisingly little research apparent on who doesn't
fill out NCOA forms -- or who does.  Most direct marketing efforts
have focused on cross-checking lists for likely changes.

One of the reasons may be the firestorm over a joint program between
Lotus Development Corporation and Equifax from the late 1980s called
Marketplace: Households that attempted to cross credit and mailing
information on all 120 million U.S. households.  It resulted in legal
restrictions on how NCOA and other information could be used.  A
Georgetown University business school paper titled "Lotus Marketplace:
Households … Managing Information Privacy Concerns" (Oct. 6, 1992)
describes the privacy concerns:
http://www.cis.gsu.edu/~emclean/Lotus%20MarketPlace%20Households.doc

Arriving at specific demographics of the composition of the NCOA
database would be by inference: for example knowing that young people
move more often.  Also note that a recent survey done by the Direct
Marketing Association (DMA) notes that "first-class mail is rapidly
losing favor with young Americans under the age of 34."  It notes
that, bill payment, accounts for almost half (49.1 percent) of all
first-class mail. Yet more than half of the survey respondents under
age 25 and 42 percent of those aged 25-34 said recent rate increases
will lead them to look for bill payment alternatives such as
electronic bill payment.
This helps buttress the postmaster's beliefs regarding young people
being less likely to care about filing a COA form.

Summary information on the study, "The Postal Generation Gap:
First-Class Mail and the Crisis of the USPS Business Model," (June,
2002) is on the DMA website at:
http://www.the-dma.org/library/whitepapers/

Searching for further information in this area inevitably leads to
DMA, which has been a strong force in researching issues for the
industry.  In fact, I've sent a note off to DMA's Research Division to
see if there's more specific demographic information available on the
NCOA database.

Note too, that the changes are referred to as "nixies" by the mailing
industry, so that's another helpful search term.

Search strategies:
"U.S. Postal Service" + NCOA
DMA + USPS
DMA + USPS + NCOA
Nixies + demographics + USPS

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Dear David, 

While I don't know the answer, I will venture to guess the numbers are
very, very low. In all categories of people.

Why? Your question is the very first time I have ever heard of the
form. And since I am quite well-informed about postal changes of
address forms, and IRS and state change of address procedures, I am
surprised that I've even heard of it. So, I wonder how many others
have.

Just my perspective. 

Thanks for letting me know it exists.

Best wishes,

Your TaxMama-ga

According to the site linked below, NCOA refers to a database that is
compiled from the Change of Address (COA) forms which postal customers
file when they relocate, if they want their mail to be forwarded. Some
people do NOT want their mail to be forwarded, of course, for various
reasons (because one is avoiding bill collectors, fleeing an abusive
relationship, etc.)

Filling out a COA form is not mandatory. The only penalty for failing
to fill out at COA is that your mail won't follow you to your new
address, but will be returned to the sender as undeliverable.

I suspect that young people would tend to move more often than older
people, but young people may be more aversive to filling out
government forms, and may be willing to shrug off the forwarding
service, preferring to notify their correspondents of a new address
themselves.

http://www.nationalchangeofaddress.com/ncoa.html