With the nation’s fertility rate at record lows, the number of children under 18 is falling across the United States — and a Journal analysis of census data from 2015 through 2024 finds the decline is far sharper in big cities than anywhere else.
The numbers
The number of children under 18 living in big U.S. cities is down 6% in the past decade, compared with a 1% decline nationwide. Among the youngest the gap is starker: children under age 5 in big cities fell 15%, against 7% nationally. Even cities gaining population are losing children. The number of children declined in about two-thirds of the 38 U.S. cities with more than 500,000 residents.
San Jose leads the decline — the number of kids under 5 there has dropped 34% in a decade, more than any other large city — despite a median household income nearly twice the national level. Children are down 15% in Albuquerque, 11% in Milwaukee, 9% in Denver and El Paso, 8% in New York and 6% in Philadelphia. Thirteen cities, many in the Sunbelt and relatively affordable for middle-class families, saw children increase 7% over the decade while their overall populations grew 12%. Seventeen more grew their populations while losing children.
Why they leave, and what it costs the city
Families cite costs, safety and quality of life. Parents in New York have to earn $334,000 to comfortably afford child care for a two-year-old, according to an analysis from the city comptroller, and the median rent for apartments with three or more bedrooms is $5,495 citywide. Since 2000 New York has lost a net 80,000 households aged 30 to 54 who are married or have at least one child under 18, a decline driven by middle-income families, said Melissa Pumphrey, chief economist of the city’s Economic Development Corporation — over the same period the city gained a net 670,000 households of single people or families without kids. Nationally the number of births has fallen 9% in a decade, and birthrates in large urban counties fell 18% between 2010 and 2024, the biggest drop of any county type, according to Connor O’Brien of the Institute for Progress.
The municipal consequences are already visible. Families are important contributors to a city’s tax base, and middle-class families in particular drive demand for the affordable goods and services that benefit everyone. With enrollment down, the El Paso Independent School District is closing elementary schools to save money. Some cities have pared school spending; others have struggled to, leaving a bloated level of per-student spending, said Jeff Clemens of the University of California, San Diego. The bigger risk, economists note, is that a decline in families is part of a broader population decline and erosion of the tax base — a fate so far avoided by the places effectively replacing families with affluent childless adults.
No trade, and a slow-burn input we would rather notice ten years early than two years late. Three places this eventually prices: municipal credit, where enrollment-driven school spending and a narrowing middle-income tax base are a general-obligation issue rather than a headline one; apartment REIT floorplans, where the mix shift from three-bedroom family units to studios and one-bedrooms is a capital-allocation decision being made right now; and the Sunbelt metros absorbing the outflow, which is the same demand data that shows up in this edition’s Florida story. We hold real assets through REIT and index sleeves precisely because demographic drift is too slow to trade and too large to ignore.
No tickers. A demographic input to municipal credit and real-asset sleeves.
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