Young families have stopped leaving big cities, for now

Article by Connor O'Brien with Economic Innovation Group can be found in full here.

But flatlining growth has not reversed massive pandemic-era population losses.

The steep and startling decline in the number of young children living in America’s major cities was a defining demographic story of the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. New data suggests that this “urban family exodus” has stopped, at least for the moment.

The population of children under five years old declined a modest 0.2 percent in the country’s large urban counties between July 2023 and July 2024, the same rate of decline as for the country as a whole. Last year was the first since the pandemic in which the under-five population did not decline faster in the county’s largest cities than it did nationwide.

Many big cities stopped losing young families in 2024.

Last year we highlighted New York City, one of the cities with the sharpest declines in the population of young children during the pandemic. After falling eight percent in 2021, five percent in 2022, and a further 2.5 percent in 2023, New York City’s population of kids under five remained relatively stable in 2024, falling by just 0.5 percent.

The Bronx experienced positive growth in this population for the first time this decade, the only borough since the pandemic to have had even a single year of positive growth.

The decline in young kids has also slowed or outright stopped in other major cities.

The population of kids under five years old in San Francisco even grew slightly (0.6 percent) last year, though it remains 15 percent smaller than it was in April 2020.

Large urban counties like Los Angeles County (-1.0 percent in 2024), New Orleans (0.9 percent), and Philadelphia (flat), which experienced very large declines in their under-five populations in prior years, also improved in 2024 relative to their post-pandemic trends.

Suffolk County, Massachusetts, which includes the City of Boston, had perhaps the most surprising reversal last year. Its population of kids under five years old jumped 2.5 percent in 2024, a far higher growth rate than any other large urban county in the Northeast.

Major cities still have many fewer young kids than in 2020.

Still, none of the large urban counties whose under-five populations declined the most between 2020 and 2023 are anywhere close to recovering to pre-pandemic levels.

Among 83 large urban counties, Manhattan (New York County) had the steepest decline in young kids since April 2020, 18.9 percent. Brooklyn is right behind, with a 17.8 percent decline.

The City of St. Louis (-17.5 percent), Cook County, Illinois (-15.6 percent), San Francisco County (-14.7 percent), and Los Angeles County (-14.4 percent) are also well below April 2020 under-five population levels.

Continue reading this article, including change in rural communities, by clicking here.