Are Cities Really Losing Millennials? — Blogs

If you google “cities mil­len­ni­als” you will find many head­lines like this, sug­gest­ing as young adults age, they are mov­ing to sub­urbs as rapid­ly as they did in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. But most of the I seen on this top­ic seem to be on a sam­ple of dozen of cities—many of which are dom­i­nat­ed by sprawl­ing sub­urbs annexed in recent decades. The city lim­its of Sun Belt cities like Nashville and Tam­pa include many areas that are more auto­mo­bile-depen­dent than inner-ring sub­urbs of New York or Philadel­phia. By con­trast, this post focus­es on pop­u­la­tion trends in the most tru­ly urban cities—cities like Philadel­phia and Wash­ing­ton, where a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion rides pub­lic tran­sit and even neigh­bor­hoods near the city lim­its have Walkscores high­er than many sub­urbs.

In par­tic­u­lar, there are six major cities where over 25 of the pop­u­la­tion uses pub­lic transit—New York, Philadel­phia, Wash­ing­ton, San Fran­cis­co, Chica­go, and Boston. It appears that most of these cities con­tin­ue to gain old­er mil­len­ni­als, accord­ing to Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Sur­vey (ACS) data.

Wash­ing­ton, DC gained peo­ple in every age group in the 25–40 age range for most of the 2010s. But between 2017 and 2018, it lost about 700 per­sons age 25–29, but gained 1,579 per­sons aged 30–34, and 2,191 per­sons aged 35–39, increas­ing its over­all thir­tysome­thing pop­u­la­tion from 139,433 to 143,113—over a 20 per­cent increase from the 2013 ACS (which showed just over 116,000 thir­tysome­things in the city). So if you define mil­len­ni­als as per­sons aged 25–40, Wash­ing­ton con­tin­ues to gain mil­len­ni­als. 

Philadel­phia has had sim­i­lar pop­u­la­tion pat­terns to Wash­ing­ton, los­ing twen­tysome­things and gain­ing thir­tysome­things. Between 2017 and 2018, the city lost about 2000 peo­ple aged 25–29, and gained over 5000 peo­ple in their ear­ly 30s and about 2500 peo­ple between 35 and 39—so on bal­ance, its mil­len­ni­al pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to increase. The for­mer decline is a one-year trend: the city gained per­sons aged 25–29 every year between 2013 and 2017, and it has 12,000 more per­sons in that age cat­e­go­ry (and about 30,000 more peo­ple in their 30s) then it did in 2013. Inter­est­ing­ly, sub­ur­ban Marin Coun­ty expe­ri­enced the oppo­site trend in 2018: it gained 267 peo­ple in their late 20s, and actu­al­ly lost thir­tysome­things.

San Fran­cis­co, despite its infa­mous­ly high hous­ing costs, also gained thir­tysome­things. The num­ber of per­sons between 30 and 34 increased from 102,800 to 104,864, and the num­ber between 35 and 39 increased from 76,324 to 78,518. But as in oth­er cities, the num­ber of late-twen­tysome­things decreased from 104,999 to 103,432. On bal­ance, San Fran­cis­co con­tin­ues to gain mil­len­ni­als. And as in Wash­ing­ton and Philadel­phia, its loss of per­sons aged 25–29 is a one-year trend: it gained pop­u­la­tion in this age cat­e­go­ry every year between 2010 and 2017. 

On the oth­er , New York City’s pat­terns var­ied by bor­ough. Man­hat­tan, the most urban­ized bor­ough, also lost res­i­dents in their late 20s: the 25–29 pop­u­la­tion decreased from 190,501 to 188,858. How­ev­er, the pop­u­la­tion aged 30–34 increased from 173,762 to 174,670, and the pop­u­la­tion aged 35–39 nudged upwards from 128,759 to 129,336. So on bal­ance, the mil­len­ni­al pop­u­la­tion held steady. But unlike the cities men­tioned above, Man­hat­tan’s 25–29 pop­u­la­tion peaked in 2013. 

The “mil­len­ni­als leav­ing the city” nar­ra­tive fits the out­er bor­oughs more accu­rate­ly than it fits Man­hat­tan. In 2018 Brook­lyn and the Bronx lost res­i­dents in their late 20s faster than it could replace them with thir­tysome­things; for exam­ple, Brook­lyn lost just over 4000 per­sons in their late 20s, and gained just over 3,000 per­sons in their 30s. Queens lost peo­ple in all mil­len­ni­al age cat­e­gories.

I am less cer­tain about data for two oth­er cities: Boston and Chica­go. The eas­i­est-to-find ACS age data is by coun­ty, but Boston and Chica­go (unlike the oth­er cities list­ed above) are in coun­ties that include sub­urbs. Suf­folk Coun­ty (the city of Boston and a few inner ring sub­urbs) expe­ri­enced pop­u­la­tion pat­terns very sim­i­lar to those of San Fran­cis­co, Wash­ing­ton, and Philadel­phia: it lost 703 res­i­dents in their late 20s and gained just over 4,000 res­i­dents in their 30s.  

Coun­ty (which includes Chica­go, but is almost sub­ur­ban) lost about 2,000 peo­ple in their late 20s and 1000 in their 30s. But the sub­urbs are not pick­ing up the slack: sub­ur­ban Dupage Coun­ty’s thir­tysome­thing pop­u­la­tion increased by the grand total of 116 peo­ple, and Lake Coun­ty actu­al­ly lost thir­tysome­thing res­i­dents. If mil­len­ni­als are leav­ing Chica­go, they appar­ent­ly are not that inter­est­ed in Chicago’s sub­urbs.

In sum, the com­mon sto­ry that “mil­len­ni­als are leav­ing cities” is high­ly exag­ger­at­ed. A few cities (like New York and Chica­go) appear to have shed younger res­i­dents over the past year or so—but many oth­ers aren’t. But it does appear that peo­ple in their late 20s are more will­ing to leave these cities than peo­ple in their 30s, which to me is some­what sur­pris­ing. Since Amer­i­cans con­tin­ue to mar­ry and have chil­dren lat­er in life than in the past, peo­ple in their 30s are more like­ly to have younger chil­dren, and thus pre­sum­ably more like­ly to decide where to live based on their chil­dren’s needs. So I would have expect­ed peo­ple in their 30s to leave cities in search of more pres­ti­gious schools and more , while twen­tysome­things stayed in cities. But the nation­al pat­tern seems to be quite dif­fer­ent.

Source link

Leave a Comment