The Disappearing Child in the City: The Urban Exodus of Families

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In this episode, Simone and the host delve into the concerning trend of families leaving major American cities. They discuss an article from The Atlantic titled 'The Urban Family Exodus is a Warning for Progressives,' highlighting statistics and factors contributing to this mass migration. With a focal point on the dramatic decline of children under five in cities like Manhattan, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, they explore the potential consequences on urban life and progressive policies. The conversation extends to comparisons between conservative and progressive cities, the impact of progressive ideologies on city infrastructure, and personal anecdotes on living in both urban and suburban environments. The episode also touches on the broader social implications and the future of family life in urban areas.

Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! Today we are going to be talking about an interesting phenomenon that I was aware was happening, but I was not aware how severe it was, and it is chilling when you go to the stats, and here we are talking about the mass and very recent mass exodus of families and children from major American cities.

They are just disappearing. And for this, I will be looking at an article in the Atlantic called the urban family exodus is a warning for progressiveS. So, of course, the piece starts with the writer bemoaning J. D. Vance as the worst human being in the world, and Trump is all monsters because they must, in their performative shlicking, I love this as always whenever they're the pronatalist piece, they must start by saying how horrible we all are, and then they go to But they may have a point. But, at the risk [00:01:00] of giving Vance any credit here, I must admit that progressives do have a family problem. The problem doesn't exist at the level of individual choice, where conservative scolds tend to fixate.

Rather, it exists at the level of urban family policy. American families with young children are leaving big urban . counties in droves. And that says something interesting about the state of mobility and damning about the state of American cities and the progressives who govern them. First, the facts in large urban metros, the number of Children under five years old is in free fall, according to a new analysis of census data by Conan O'Brien, a policy and Oh, no, sorry.

Connor O'Brien looks like he's

Speaker 4: a policy analyst.

Speaker 2: Now you're doing a new guy at the think tank economic innovation group from 2020 to 2023. So in three years, the number of these kids declined by nearly 20 percent in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens. And the [00:02:00] Bronx.

They also fell by double digit percentage points in counties making up most or all of Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. If you do not understand how huge that is, imagine if some other population declined by 20 percent in Manhattan over the course of three years.

Imagine if like the number of black people in Manhattan declined by 20 percent over three years, would progressives be a brick? Would they be running around like the sky was on

Speaker: fire? Well, and we also have to think about the, the industry impacts of this. If there are not enough children to justify good schools, good daycares, good services,

Speaker 2: it's going to be really hard to get that.

Yeah.

Speaker: This is terrifying.

Speaker 2: This exodus is not merely the result of past COVID waves. Yes. The pace of the urban exodus was fastest during the high pandemic years of [00:03:00] 2020 and 2021. But even at the slower rate of out migration since then, several counties, including those encompassing Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are on pace to lose.

50 percent of their under 5 population in 20 years. 50 percent in the next 20 years. To be clear, demographics have complex feedback loops and counterfeedback loops. The total population of these places won't necessarily have by the 2040s. But we all know it will, so let's be honest here. Nor is this exodus merely the result of declining nationwide birth rates.

Yes, women across the country are having fewer children than they used to. The share of women under 40 who have never given birth doubled from the early 1980s to the 2020s. But the under 5 population is still declining twice as fast in large urban counties as it is elsewhere, according to O'Brien Censor News.

Analysis. So what's the matter with Manhattan and L. [00:04:00] A. and Chicago? After the Great Recession, during a period of low urban crime, young college educated people flocked to downtown areas to advance their career. Retail upscaled and housing costs increased. Soon families started to leave. In 2019, the economist Jed Koloko showed that in cities including San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.

C., young high income college educated whites were moving in. And multiracial families with children were moving out. The coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in school closures and loosened the tether between home and office, pushed even more families to flee. Now, I want to note that they are playing a little shell game here because I want to put these statistics out on the screen right here.

Multiracial people as an ethnic group have the lowest fertility rate of any ethnic group in the U. S. Well below whites. Wait, really? Yeah, remember when we were going over that piece yesterday? Oh. But yeah this is, [00:05:00] he's just, he's just playing, playing games here. Playing games here. And also, as I mentioned in that episode of all ethnic groups in the U. S. other than inter ethnic groups blacks have the second lowest fertility rate. If you are only looking at blacks, not 30 percent of income.

If you're looking at blacks in the bottom 30 percent of income, it brings the black fertility rate in line with other fertility rates.

Speaker 3: But

Speaker 2: blacks actually have a devastatingly low fertility when they're not in just objective poverty. Wow. In the United States at least. Which goes against progressive narratives.

, so here they're saying, quote, I am deeply worried about the family exodus doom loop, end quote, O'Brien told me, quote, when the population of young kids in a city falls to 10 or 20 percent in just a few years, that's a potential political earthquake. Almost overnight, there are fewer parents around to fight for better schools, local playgrounds, or all the other mundane .

Amenities families care about in quote behavior is contagious as Yale sociologist Nicholas Chetensky has shown if you have a [00:06:00] friend who smokes or exercises It significantly increases the odds that you will do the same The same principle might hold for having or not having kids actually studies have shown very I don't know He's not familiar with these studies, but okay, whatever as young children become scarce in big cities People in their twenties and thirties 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 news. At a glance, these trends might not seem like they have anything to do with contemporary progressivism, but they do. America's richest cities are profoundly left leaning and many of them, including New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are themselves in constant in left leaning.

States, the places ought to be advertisements for what modern progressive movement can achieve without the meddlesome conservatism getting in the way. At the local or state level, if pro