the child shortage in SF, Portland, etc.
In recent weeks, I've read numerous stories about how various cities (most notably San Francisco and Portland) are suffering a shortage of children- the evident message being that even the most attractive cities will never be attractive to parents, I guess.

So I decided to dig up Census data to try to compare SF and Portland to other cities. The most obvious statistic one might use is percentage of people under 18: but that statistic runs head-on into the fact that poor people tend to have a lot more children than rich people. So for example, 14% of SF residents are under 18 as opposed to 31% of residents of the city of Detroit- but surely no one is dumb enough to suggest that Detroit is more child-friendly than SF.

My ideal statistic would measure the number of children in a city but control for social class; since I couldn't find such a statistic (at least not tonight), I decided to try to use race as a surrogate (admittedly an imperfect one - but whites ARE richer than everyone else on average).

The statistic I used: percentage of white, non-Hispanic persons over 3 who are in K-12 schools (public OR private) (you can find it as Table P147 in Census SF3 data set, divided into kindergarden, 1-8, high school). Here are some numbers:

REALLY BIG CITIES

# of whites # of whites % of whites
over 3 in K-12 who are kids
LA 1,065,529 122,910 11.5
NYC 2,719,644 334,931 12.3
Chicago 884,116 87,602 9.9

VERY PROSPEROUS CITIES

San Francisco 332,958 17,537 5.3
Portland 387,725 51,522 13.2
Seattle 373,281 32,383 8.6

CITIES WITHOUT SUBURBS (Cities that have grown by annexing everything that is not nailed down)

Oklahoma City 315,531 48,584 15.3
Indianapolis 507,788 82,748 16.2
San Jose 310,224 46,370 14.9
San Diego 586,683 69,152 11.8

TWO-CLASS CITIES (upscale white population, mixed black population)

Washington 155,557 8759 5.6
Atlanta 127,291 9429 7.4

AGING, TROUBLED INDUSTRIAL CITIES (with large working class white populations)

Philadelphia 629,602 86,040 13.6
Buffalo 147,609 20,785 14.1
St. Louis 145,205 17,894 12.3
Cleveland 179,557 26,773 14.9
Hartford 21,189 1749 8.2

SOME OTHER CITIES THAT DON'T FIT ANY OF THE ABOVE CATEGORIES (median household incomes are $44-47,000, far below SF/DC/Atlanta, far above industrial cities which start at Philadelphia's $37K a year and then go down from there)+

Denver 280,537 24,620 8.7
Boston 284,322 21,285 7.5



Some thoughts:

1. Portland got a bum rap. San Francisco didn't. But even SF isn't significantly more child-free than DC.

2. There's pretty much zero correlation between the number of children in a city (white or otherwise) and its overall prosperity, etc. If anything, relatively safe, prosperous places have fewer children.

3. No real correlation between density and a low number of white children. Some high density cities (DC, Boston, SF) have a low child %, but others (NYC, Philly) less so. Atlanta is a very low density city with a low child %.

4. Some (but not 100%) negative correlation between housing values and number of children.
Here's median home values for Anglo households, together with Anglo child % above:

Home value (in thousands
of dollars) Child %


SF 471 5.3
San Jose 425 14.9
Washington 380 5.6
Atlanta 327 7.4
LA 303 11.5
Seattle 274 8.6
San Diego 262 11.8
NYC 239 12.3
Boston 207 7.5
Denver 185 8.7
Chicago 164 9.9
Portland 157 13.2
Indianapolis 103 16.2
Hartford 98 8.2
Oklahoma City 85 15.3
Cleveland 78 14.9
St. Louis 73 12.3
Philadelphia 73 13.6
Buffalo 64 14.1