U.S. big cities lose children as families move due to costs

Child population down 15% under age 5 in large cities, analysis finds

When Fernando and Patricia Escobedo moved to the Willows, an affluent neighborhood in El Paso, Texas, 25 years ago, about half the homes on their cul-de-sac had children. The neighborhood’s annual block party featured a bouncy house and visits from the local firetruck. Now, the Escobedos’ twin daughters are in college, and their 12-year-old daughter is one of few children under 18 on the block. “It’s not the vibe it was 10 years ago when there were still kids here,” Fernando Escobedo told the Journal.

The experience in El Paso mirrors a nationwide trend. The Journal analyzed Census Bureau data from 2015 through 2024 and found that the number of children under 18 declined in about two-thirds of the 38 U.S. cities with more than 500,000 residents. Even cities that are gaining population are losing children, the analysis found.

San Jose, California, saw the steepest drop among large cities, with the number of children under age 5 falling 34% over the decade. Ernie and Samantha Solis, both born and raised in the San Jose area, left the city in 2021 for Star, Idaho, a small town near Boise. Ernie, a firefighter, said buying a home was out of reach on their salaries. Daycare cost about $25,000 a year per child. They worried about state vaccine mandates. “I was just over it,” Ernie told the Journal. He now flies into San Jose every Monday, stays in free dorms for firefighters during the week, and returns to Idaho on Friday.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the number of children fell 15%—about half of that decline from families moving away and half from the falling birth rate, according to the Journal’s analysis. Births in Bernalillo County have dropped 20% in the past decade. In Denver, the number of children dropped 9%, driven by a 7% decline in births.

The falling birth rate is a major factor across the country. The number of births in the U.S. has fallen 9% in the past decade, largely due to fewer women having children in their teens and 20s. Connor O’Brien, a fellow at the Institute for Progress, found that birth rates in large urban counties fell 18% between 2010 and 2024, the biggest drop of any county type.

In New York City, the number of children is down 8% over the past decade. Since 2000, the city has lost a net 80,000 households with people aged 30 to 54 who are married or have at least one child under 18, a decline driven by middle-income families, according to Melissa Pumphrey, chief economist of the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Over that period, New York gained a net 670,000 households of single people or families without children. Parents must earn $334,000 to comfortably afford child care for a 2-year-old, according to an analysis from the city’s comptroller. The median rent for three-bedroom apartments is $5,495 citywide.

Raheim Bazile was paying $750 a month to rent a room in Queens, about a quarter of his monthly take-home pay as a truck driver for the U.S. Postal Service. He applied for affordable housing through a city lottery but never landed a unit. When he got engaged in 2023, he and his fiancée immediately started planning to leave. They settled in Easton, Pennsylvania, a city of about 30,000, last year. Their son was born earlier this year. “Here, I feel much lighter,” Bazile told the Journal.

Not all large cities are losing children. The Journal found that 13 of the 38 cities saw the number of kids grow. Those cities, many in the Sunbelt, are often relatively affordable for middle-class families. They saw the number of children increase 7% over the past decade, while their overall population grew 12%. Seventeen other large cities saw their populations grow while the number of children living there dropped.

The economic consequences are beginning to emerge. Fewer children means less support for public schools, often one of the largest employers in many cities. Economists said the big risk is that a decline in families becomes part of a broader population decline and erosion of a city’s tax base. The places that are effectively replacing families with affluent childless adults are so far avoiding this fate, the Journal reported.