Family-friendly metro areas have shrinking baby populations. Will they still appeal to the next generation of buyers?

America’s declining birth rate has gone from a niche policy issue to mainstream news, as economists, demographers and even the president weigh in on what it means for the country’s future.

Much of the attention has been focused on the impact on large-scale systems such as social security, the workforce and even the housing market. But a more immediate shift is happening at the local level, in the places where the population of young children is shrinking the fastest: what will these cities look like with fewer children?

For decades, the American family map seemed intuitive. If you wanted more space and lower costs, you moved to the places where families grew: Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Denver. These subways were affordable and owed much of their appeal to their family friendliness; a quality that many assumed would be stable, if not permanent.

But even in these growing cities, the youngest cohort is thinning out.

A Realtor.com® Analysis of 2010 and 2024 U.S. Census American Community Survey data shows a broad shift: The share of residents under the age of five has declined in nearly every one of the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. In 2010, the population under 5 years ranged from 5.4% to 9%. By 2024 this had fallen to 4.2% to 6.8%. Even metros that have grown in population overall now have proportionately fewer children than they did a decade ago.

It asks an important question: Can cities remain family-friendly even as children make up a smaller share of the population?

Where the share below 5 falls the fastest

Historically, child population reflects an area’s ability to attract, support and retain families. But the city whose under-five population is shrinking the most is challenging this long-standing ideal.

Salt Lake City experienced the largest decline in the population share under 5 years old between 2010 and 2024, a decline of 3.1%. It’s an important finding, as Salt Lake City has long been considered a prototype of family-friendly growth metropolises.

But the decline likely has less to do with a lack of family-friendly services and more to do with a nationwide decline in the birth rate, which hit a record low in 2024, the report said. Data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The same whiplash is showing up in other places that have reportedly been a magnet for families: Phoenix is ​​down 2.3%, Denver is down 2%, Atlanta is down 2%, Riverside, CA, is down 2%, and San Jose, CA, a coastal tech powerhouse with some of the most expensive housing in the country, is down 2.2%.

The pattern is notable because these metro areas have seen explosive growth over the past five years, driven by strong labor markets and amenities. Yet their shrinking share of young children shows a growing gap: population growth no longer guarantees generational renewal.

Where the share under 5 years remains relatively high

Only a small handful of large metropolises will still exceed the 6% limit of children under 5 in 2024. Fresno, CA, tops this group at 6.8%, followed by Houston at 6.5%. Dallas and Memphis, TN, are tied at 6.3%, with Indianapolis following close behind at 6.2%. San Antonio, Texas, comes in at 6.1% and Oklahoma City rounds out the list at 6%.

These are promising signs that, at least by this measure, young families still make up a larger share of the local population than in comparable regions.

But the twist is that these metropolises are not immune to the declining number of child residents. Even in places that are still baby-heavy by 2024 standards, the direction of travel is still downward compared to 2010.

Where the share under 5 fell the least

The metros where the under-five share has fallen the least are the ones that puncture the easy narratives most effectively. This list isn’t dominated by Sun Belt boomtowns or “new economy” magnets, as you might expect.

Instead, it includes places often associated with an aging population, high costs or long-term migration. Yet they still recorded relatively small declines in the under-5 share between 2010 and 2024.

New York City stands out with the smallest decline in this data set, down just 0.7%. Pittsburgh and Hartford, CT, follow closely, each down 0.8%. Then there is a small group of metro areas where the baby share fell by roughly 0.9 to 1 percentage point: Miami; Boston; Detroit; Tampa, FL; Baltimore; Virginia Beach, VA; and Cleveland.

Again, there are no easy answers here, but these modest declines may be due to the fact that these cities already had a comparatively small share of children under 5 in 2010, averaging just 6.2%, compared to almost 7% for the top 50 metros overall that year.

What makes a family-friendly city?

Regardless of whether or not you have (or want) children in your life, the fact that the share of the population under the age of five is falling in all 50 largest metros should set alarm bells ringing. The decline is geographically dispersed and indicates a structural shift rather than a local trend. While there are clearly multiple forces at play, one factor appears to carry disproportionate weight: affordability, specifically the combined costs of housing and childcare.

At least that is the blunt conclusion from the Manhattan Institute’s analysis family-friendly subways: When you look at where children actually live and where families move, the cost of living is the variable that consistently appears as the dominant line.

The metros with the strongest family appeal are not reliably the ones with the best scores on other quality-of-life indicators; they are the ones where daily life is simply cheaper to run. Look no further than Salt Lake City, once a bastion of affordability. Today, the median home price is $600,000, well above the national median of $420,000, according to data from Realtor.com.

And the shift is more important now than perhaps ever before, because the constraints on the family have changed. External and hybrid flexibility means that more households can respond to preferences they previously suppressed: more space, lower fixed costs, less financial pressure in housing and care.

How do cities change when there are fewer children?

In that context, the choices a city makes to attract and retain families will function as a long-term economic strategy for families with and without children.

In one New Yorker piece earlier this year about a future with fewer children, writer Gideon Lewis Kraus traveled to South Korea — where the fertility rate has fallen to about 0.7, well below the U.S. rate of roughly 1.6 — and found the telltale signs of demographic collapse in everyday life: “no-kids zones” at businesses, maternity seats in the Seoul subway that remained conspicuously empty, and a culture in which parents describe having to apologize in advance to neighbors for the noise a baby can make.

He also describes the repurposing of public infrastructure and institutions around the shift: daycare centers converted into nursing homes, and even schools converted into cafes, resorts or family campsites because there are simply not enough children to keep them open.

And if that’s a future cities want to avoid, more deliberate choices will be needed, he argues Hannah Love And Jennifer S. Vey of the Brookings Institution.

The “childless city” is not destiny, they say; it is the downstream outcome of policy and planning decisions – whether cities build enough family housing, invest in safe streets and parks, expand access to child care and public transportation, and design public spaces for both children and consumers.

In other words, cities can either fail in an economy that caters to affluent, childfree adults, or consciously choose to remain viable for families of varying incomes and avoid pricing the next generation out of the places where opportunity is concentrated.