The Bay Area’s diminishing child population
Families with young kids have been some of the fastest to flee major urban cities during 2020–2021, demonstrates Adam Ozimek and Connor O’Brien’s report for the Economic Innovation Group. Ozimek and O’Brien unravel curious data behind nationwide child exoduses. If 46% of SCC and San Mateo County children have caretakers who can’t afford basic necessities, is it surprising that local family outmigration has reached historic highs? To receive daily updates of new Opp Now stories, click here.
Major cities experienced historic rates of population loss in 2021, with 68 percent of large urban counties seeing a decline in population. One factor in this historic outmigration was the rise of remote work, which has reduced the value of living in close proximity to the job opportunities in these large labor markets. Yet a plausible question is whether the net benefit of living in large urban areas for young families in particular has declined. Families, due to their typical size, have larger space requirements, which implies a greater benefit from moving to areas with lower cost of housing and living overall, as well as open spaces. In addition, rising crime and school closures in particular may be weighing on families as well. New data released last week from the Census Bureau for the first time confirms this theory, showing a large outflow of families with young children from large urban areas in 2020 and 2021.
From July 2020 to July 2021, the number of children under five years of age in large urban counties—those intersecting with an urban area of at least 250,000 people—fell by 238,000, a one-year drop of 3.7 percent. Including the early months of the pandemic in 2020, this figure grows even larger. Between 2019 and July 2021, large urban counties saw their under-five population fall by 358,000 children, a decline of 5.4 percent.
This article originally appeared in the Economic Innovation Group. Read the whole thing here.
This article is part of an exclusive Opp Now series on California’s outmigration crisis:
SVBJ reporters Mark Calvey and Allison Levitsky dissect why companies are leaving the Bay Area, and how to slow the exodus.
Political commentator Joel Fox says Gov. Gavin Newsom must address the “tidal wave” of Californians moving to Texas for tax, business, and legal benefits, by correcting flawed legislation.
The PRI’s Kerry Jackson explains how the Silicon Valley has become a challenging place to do business.
The HJTA’s yearly “Follow the Money” report catalogues state mismanagement of taxpayer money. 2021’s report details key examples of corrupt bureaucratic spending, all closely intertwined with SF Bay Area exoduses.
Scan the high points of CPC’s “Book of Exoduses” from CA, including that $1 trillion-valued Tesla’s headquarters transferred to Texas, along with data center firm Digital Realty Trust and myriad other organizations.
Brandon Ristoff from CPC purports that “The Exodus” began plaguing our state long before COVID-19 did—due to residents’ taxes and housing expenses.
Lee E. Ohanian traces recent mass business departures to California’s imprudent economic policies.
Front Page Magazine’s Larry Sand discusses the Golden State exoduses en masse.
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