A new analysis from the U.S. Census Bureau found that the number of young children in America’s largest cities is “rapidly shrinking” at an alarming rate.
Economic Innovation Group researcher Connor O’Brien reported that the number of children from birth to four years had declined 18% in New York City, 15% in Cook County, Illinois (Chicago), and 14% in Los Angeles County from 2020 to 2023. The number of children under five is also falling by double-digit percentage points in counties making up most or all of San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. Several of America’s largest cities of are on track to lose 50% of their age 0-4 population in the next 20 years. According to The Atlantic, even progressives are worried.
For comparison, the Washington Stand reported that the 0-4 population decreased 2.3% from 2020 to 2021, 1% from 2021 to 2022, and 0.8% from 2022 to 2023 — an overall three-year drop of 4.1%. But in large urban areas, that age group decreased 3.9% from 2020-2021, 2.2% from 2021-2022, and 1.5% from 2022-2023 — a three-year drop of 7.6%. The only area where the 0-4 population grew (by 2%) was exurban counties — areas just outside of suburbs that are considered semi-rural.
“Progressives do have a family problem,” admitted Derek Thompson, of The Atlantic. “The steady march of the childless city is … the result of urban policy, conceived by, written by, and enacted by liberals” (emphasis added).
O’Brien told Thompson, “I’m deeply worried about a family-exodus doom loop. When the population of young kids in a city falls 10 to 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.”
It appears that families are moving out of large urban centers, reported Joshua Arnold for the Washington Stand, contributing to the declines in city populations of ages 0-4. He explained, “Large cities are pursuing policies that cause families to leave.”
Fewer criminal arrests and less police support
Arnold lists two “major concerns’ for families with young children: safety and affordability. Over the last 10 years, progressive cities have changed how they prosecute crimes “in the name of equality” and have failed to support police forces who now won’t arrest criminals because they know the prosecutor will dismiss the charges. This has led to increases, said the Washington Stand, of open-air drug markets, shoplifting, and rioting within these cities.
“A particularly lax approach to punishing minors encouraged the creation of underage gangs that have conducted organized smash-and-grabs and armed carjacking. This deliberate policy choice by local, progressive prosecutors caused violent crime to skyrocket, making the city less safe for families,” wrote Arnold. “Mothers with strollers do not appreciate homeless encampments on the sidewalks, drug sales at the playground, and organized smash-and-grabs at the corner market.”
Increased housing costs
In addition, these cities have pushed policies that increase costs for families, argues Arnold. From high taxes to expensive house-building permit processes, cities have become too expensive for families. “Since every worker has to pay for housing, an expensive housing market drives up wages, which drives up the cost of nearly everything — from McDonald’s to gas prices to (especially) childcare,” noted Arnold.
Discouraging the creation of families
Arnold adds another cause to the decline — progressive cities are discouraging the creation of families. He notes that there has been a “revolutionary philosophical shift in the post-modern world in which people tend to define their identity in reference to themselves, rather than to outward-facing relationships.”
Modern Americans are more focused on their feelings and “expressive individualism.” Rather than aiming to build a family, young adults are focused on careers, travel, and hobbies, and wrongly consider children to be an obstacle to those goals.
READ: AWFUL: UK’s two-child benefit cap is pressuring women to choose abortion
Anti-family zoning laws
However, there’s another factor to consider. CityLab has exposed a disturbing new trend: in cities, local politicians are using zoning laws to prevent families with children from moving in, and it’s disproportionately affecting Millennials and minorities. In 2019, Nolan Gray, an urban planning researcher, and Lyman Stone, an economist, outlined multiple details showing that city planning officials are essentially creating what they call “vasectomy zoning” by implementing policies that encourage people to stop having children.
In Philadelphia, the City Planning Commission proposed a zoning change that would have effectively banned new daycare centers, tire stores, and car repair shops in northwest Philadelphia. Garwood, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City, adopted a plan that included a complete ban on housing units with three or more bedrooms. Likewise, the city of Nutley, New Jersey, banned three-bedroom housing.
“[M]unicipalities increasingly meet their state-mandated fair-share affordable housing requirements by building only senior housing,” Gray and Stone wrote. “Affordable housing proposals that include three-bedroom units are rejected out of hand, leaving working families with few options.”
In fact, CityLab wrote:
[R]ising housing costs are preventing more and more women from having children. While jokes about avocado toast would have you believe that Millennials could afford homes if they could only change their spendthrift ways, the reality seems to work in reverse: High housing costs are likely forcing many young couples to make difficult lifestyle changes, such as delaying children.
In a recent study for the Institute for Family Studies, Lyman finds that faster-rising rents are associated with lower fertility for women in their 20s and 30s, when most young couples would normally be starting families. The net effect of the high cost of housing is that more women are either putting off having children well past their peak family-formation years, or are simply not having the children they say they would like to have.
The impact on Black and Hispanic families
Hispanic and Black women now have fertility rates higher than white women, which means that these progressive policies are effectively shutting minority families out of communities and denying them access to daycare. As Live Action News previously reported, when these minority families, who are disproportionately likely to struggle with poverty, are shut out of communities with family-friendly resources and affordable housing, they may be more likely to choose abortion. The abortion industry preys upon and mistreats minority women.
In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that while the abortion rate percentage among white women decreased from 2020 to 2021, it increased by nearly six percent (5.86%) among Black women (39.2% in 2020 v. 41.5% in 2021) and over three percent (3.3%) among Hispanic women (21.7% in 2020 v. 21.8% in 2021).
A Live Action undercover investigation found that Planned Parenthood was willing to accept donations earmarked towards aborting Black babies and has been found to pressure black women into sterilization.
These are methods of population control. Progressive policies that discourage the creation of families are quite simply additional ways to control minority populations. The analysis by Stone and Gray found that many of the people who aren’t having children are primarily doing so because they feel they have no other choice.
Perhaps women aren’t joyfully having abortions to exercise their “choice” but are turning to abortion because they believe they have no choice — and city officials are reinforcing that erroneous belief. The latest analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau data showing the rapid decline of children ages 0-4 in America’s cities is proof that progressive policies are killing off American families.
