Of all the trends reshaping cities in the post-pandemic era, this may be the most worrying: In large numbers, families of young children are fleeing urban centers. Answering their concerns so that New York and other metropolises remain places where millions of kids grow up is urgent, and essential.
The trend, identified by Conor O’Brien of the Economic Innovation Group and spotlighted this week by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic, is especially stark here in New York City — where as of July 2023, the population of kids under 5 was 18.3% lower than in April 2020. Manhattan saw a 20.5% decline; Queens, 19.5%; Brooklyn, 18.7%. San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago all saw declines of about 15%.
What’s going on? Clearly, the COVID pandemic and the work-from-home arrangements that followed jarred families loose from dense city centers. If moms and dads no longer had to live within an easy daily commute of workplaces, they were free to relocate where they could get more space and less hassle for less money.
The number of people leaving big cities post-pandemic is twice its pre-pandemic rate, and showing no signs yet of slowing. (It doesn’t help that birth rates are dropping faster in big cities than in suburbs and rural areas.)
Beneath it all is the fact that housing costs in cities are profoundly out of whack, especially for those who need two, three or (gasp) even four-bedroom residences. A family can live without a yard for kids to run around in, especially if there are great parks and playgrounds and libraries and other family-friendly assets. It cannot live without beds for the kids to sleep in.
Declining number of young kids in urban centers can have a reinforcing effect. As Thompson writes: “As young children become scarce in big cities, people in their 20s and 30s who are thinking about having children will have fewer opportunities to see firsthand how fulfilling parenthood can be. What they’re left with instead are media representations, which tend to be inflected by the negativity bias of the news.”
So what’s the answer? It starts with building housing so there are more affordable places for families to live. Americans tell the Census Bureau that housing is the dominant reason they move. Cities might never be cheaper than suburbs, but they ought not be places where families feel like they’re backsliding economically almost every day.
Solving the problem also demands more attention from the school system and other pieces of the child-care ecosystem — which must think hard not only about equity, which is essential, but about competing with other systems to add real value that attracts and keeps kids and parents. Universal Pre-K and 3K are wonderful things, but they’re not powerful enough magnets to counterbalance painfully expensive day care, and schools that too often do just an OK job educating young people.
The decline in families with young kids is an urgent problem that demands an all-hands-on-deck solution from government, working with the private sector. How about it, Mayor Eric Adams?