4 ms·

That’s simply not true. Manhattan is home to 1.8 million people, several hundred thousand of whom are children. 18% of Manhattan’s population is under age 18,

That’s simply not true. Manhattan is home to 1.8 million people, several hundred thousand of whom are children. 18% of Manhattan’s population is under age 18, compared to 24% nationwide. Fewer families than a suburban area, sure, but still many, MANY families, a large fraction of Manhattan’s population.

rayiner 7y ago
Those kids aren’t middle class, and the situation for them is not functional or healthy. The median household income in the communities where New York County (Manhattan) public school kids live is around $40,000, half the median income of New York County as a whole. (For obvious reasons, the situation is reversed in most of the rest of the country—households with kids earn more than households without them, because they’re statistically more likely to have two earners and older heads of the household.) 75% of New York Public School kids are eligible for free or reduced price lunch. The public school system does not serve a representative cross section of the community, but people who are stuck in the city due to availability of service jobs, availability of public housing, etc. Many of whom will flee to the suburbs as soon as their economic situation improves. They’re people like some members of my family, new immigrants who lived in the city while getting established, but moved to Long Island as soon as they got their feet under them. People have been playing up the “revival” of cities over the past two decades, but it turns out that was entirely due to college educated white people with no kids: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/where-have-all-the-children-gone/594133 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/where-have.... From 2000-2017, the rate of urban living for people with school-aged kids actually dropped 5%.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I went to grad school with a lot of people who went to Manhattan to get jobs in the financial industry. Almost all of them, when they had kids, moved out of the city to Connecticut or wherever. And I'm pretty sure the balance who stayed in the city after they had kids sent them to private school. >People have been playing up the “revival” of cities over the past two decades, but it turns out that was entirely due to college educated white people with no kids Given that cities like Boston were still losing population 20 years ago, I do sometimes wonder if the current urban living revival (to a relative handful of cities) is mostly a fad among a very specific demographic that could reverse fairly easily with a generational change.
  - ido 7y ago
    Here in Germany a cursory search shows that the biggest cities (Berlin & Hamburg, both their own states like DC in the US) are at the bottom of the children-per-woman chart while the top spots are mostly taken by the most rural states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_ferti... And perhaps more "incriminating" is that last spot is taken by Berlin while the first by Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin on all sides (and thus containing all its suburbs).

rayiner 7y ago

Those kids aren’t middle class, and the situation for them is not functional or healthy. The median household income in the communities where New York County (Manhattan) public school kids live is around $40,000, half the median income of New York County as a whole. (For obvious reasons, the situation is reversed in most of the rest of the country—households with kids earn more than households without them, because they’re statistically more likely to have two earners and older heads of the household.) 75% of New York Public School kids are eligible for free or reduced price lunch. The public school system does not serve a representative cross section of the community, but people who are stuck in the city due to availability of service jobs, availability of public housing, etc. Many of whom will flee to the suburbs as soon as their economic situation improves. They’re people like some members of my family, new immigrants who lived in the city while getting established, but moved to Long Island as soon as they got their feet under them. People have been playing up the “revival” of cities over the past two decades, but it turns out that was entirely due to college educated white people with no kids: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/where-have-all-the-children-gone/594133 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/where-have.... From 2000-2017, the rate of urban living for people with school-aged kids actually dropped 5%.

ghaff 7y ago
I went to grad school with a lot of people who went to Manhattan to get jobs in the financial industry. Almost all of them, when they had kids, moved out of the city to Connecticut or wherever. And I'm pretty sure the balance who stayed in the city after they had kids sent them to private school. >People have been playing up the “revival” of cities over the past two decades, but it turns out that was entirely due to college educated white people with no kids Given that cities like Boston were still losing population 20 years ago, I do sometimes wonder if the current urban living revival (to a relative handful of cities) is mostly a fad among a very specific demographic that could reverse fairly easily with a generational change.
- ido 7y ago
  Here in Germany a cursory search shows that the biggest cities (Berlin & Hamburg, both their own states like DC in the US) are at the bottom of the children-per-woman chart while the top spots are mostly taken by the most rural states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_ferti... And perhaps more "incriminating" is that last spot is taken by Berlin while the first by Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin on all sides (and thus containing all its suburbs).