During the pandemic, we saw droves of people leaving major cities for places with more space. When you couldn’t go near other people, having a yard suddenly sounded nice to a lot of people.
But now, new research from the Economic Innovation Group shows the trend hasn’t stopped post-pandemic, especially among young families. It’s measured by looking at the number of young children in urban centers, which has continued its decline since 2020 and 2021. In Arizona, we saw the same trends in our major cities — and some big increases in kids aged 0-5 in other places.
David Plane, professor emeritus at the University of Arizona School of Geography, Development, and Environment, joined The Show to talk about the central question: If young families are leaving urban centers, where are they going?
Full conversation
DAVID PLANE: The only category that they looked at where there was increasing numbers of 0- to 4-year-olds were in the exurban parts of metropolitan areas. So it's not just though people moving, it's also that the population is aging, including to 4-year-olds are becoming 5- to 9-year-olds …
LAUREN GILGER: And not as many 0- to 4-year-olds being born, right.
PLANE: Yes, exactly. U.S. fertility rates are now at record low levels for our country, and our country is kind of an outlier among developed countries and having had above replacement level fertility up until quite recently. Replacement level fertility means every woman on average replaces herself and one other member of the population.
So, what's called a total fertility rate of 2.1 is needed, 2.1 children per woman is needed to replace the population and keep it from shrinking and the U.S. is now well below that.
GILGER: Right. Right. So, so birth rates are a factor here. What else goes into this kind of trend, like is this pandemic-driven which so many things are today?
PLANE: Yeah, the pandemic, what economist or demographer might call a period effect, certainly has had all sorts of interesting repercussions including what we're looking at here I think. Housing affordability is the other big issue and of course COVID affected that as well. But you know, this trend is not all that new in that as people go through the life course, young adults want to live farther out from the center of cities for economic reasons because they want more housing space.
And as you go away from the center of a geographic point, there's just a lot more land available. Housing is cheaper as you go as you go further out.
GILGER: Right. So we know that narrative, right. That, like, you know, people have kids, they move to the suburbs, they have more space. This was a big trend though we saw during the pandemic for people, families that did live maybe in, in the middle of a city with a yard but moved to a less urban place where they had lots more space because people really wanted that. Was, was the pandemic, like an accelerator for this kind of trend that we usually see anyway.
PLANE: Yeah, I think so. We have a second home on the coast of Maine on the island and our island school during the pandemic years, enrollment doubled. It was up to almost 30 kids in the island school and this year it's down to 14 again. So yeah, there was definitely an effect of people wanting to, you know, some, some of the worst COVID death rates and so on were, were in places like New York City and so on early on.
GILGER: Yeah, that urge to spread out. Let's talk a little bit about some of the, the Arizona specific data here and some of the nitty gritty that I thought was really interesting actually. Like we saw in, in many of the major counties where there are major cities like in Maricopa and Santa Cruz County and Coconino counties all saw decreases in, in that population of kids, you know, really young kids, 0 to 4.
But in Pinal County, we saw this really big jump like 17% which seems like an anomaly here. What's behind that?
PLANE: Well, that is the ex-urban aspect that is part of the study here. It's all about housing affordability, the housing cost gradient as you get farther and farther out, there's a lot of land available in Pinal County. Pinal County has been one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S. now for several, several decades as Phoenix has continued to sprawl farther and farther out. So it's affordable housing, and housing affordability has just been a huge issue for young people.
GILGER: So I want to talk a little bit about some of the effects of this, right? Like what does it mean for cities, the central cities which have been, you know, such magnets for so many years now that young people are like kids are not going to be there as much.
PLANE: Yeah, I've worked off and on at the U.S. Census Bureau and after the 2010 census, we did a special report where we actually measured all kinds of demographic variables at different distances from what we defined as the center point of metropolitan areas. And then looked at the changes in things like age structure, at different distances away from the center and population growth rates and so on.
And back then after the Great Recession, the young people were just flocking to the downtown area. So we we've really reinvented the downtowns of American cities. It's kind of the fun part of town for young people, and particularly prior to childbearing, that's, that's where the action is. That's where they all wanted to be.
Our older daughter in Denver actually bought probably one of the closest to ground zero houses in the Denver metropolitan area, but it only had like 900 square feet. After their second of their three children were born. They, they heard the call of the suburbs.
GILGER: Your own family following these, these national trends. So let me ask you lastly here, Dave just about predictions for the future. Like it seems like in demographics, even when we have big blips, like the pandemic, these are sort of trends that are cyclical that repeat themselves based on generations.
So I wonder like based on what you've done for your career and the work that you do, what do you think is unique about what's happening right now in our demographics that might look a little different and not repeat these trends in the same way in the future.
PLANE: Yeah, I think things are going to slow down a little bit in that regards the U.S. has a very unusual age structure as a result of the post-World War II baby boom, the baby boomers, those of us in that generation, you know, are now retiring in big numbers. But our kids, what demographers would call the baby boom echo, but maybe more popularly known as millennials, that was actually the biggest generation in American history.
Where we are now for young families is what I would call the baby bust echo. So during the 1970s, it was a very small generation following the big baby boom generation. And we're now at the echo of the baby bust. And so I think there's going to be less of these fluctuations going forward in the future.
One thing that's been going on with young people though is they've been, their migration has been highly focused on some amenity rich places where they, they really wanted to live for lifestyle reasons. And so we've had, you know, severe housing shortages in part of the country. Whereas in other parts of the country, you know, they're kind of desperate for people at this point. So things are, things are going to be different in the future.
GILGER: Well, it'll be interesting to see.
