Where have all the children gone?
(Note: Another cross-post from my website.)
For the past seven years, there has been a disturbing trend in the demographics of New York City. In each of those years, there are fewer children enrolled in our public schools than the year before. In the late 90s, student enrollment increased, but starting with the 2001-02 school year that trend was reversed. If the 2001-02 year were a blip, it could have been chalked up to the 9/11 attacks, but it turned out to be merely the beginning of a longer-term trend (see graph below).
According to Census Bureau estimates*, New York City's population increased by 2.6% from April 1, 2000 to June 1, 2006. Yet during that same time, student enrollment in our public schools declined by 4.4%. I'm not a statistician, but I'm pretty good with numbers, and that seems to me to be a significant difference.
Why is this a problem?
Put simply, families are fleeing New York City. There are a lot of anecdotal claims that the middle class is being squeezed out, and that New York City is becoming less family-friendly; these numbers seem to provide some strong evidence that this is true. If this trend continues, what will become of New York City? If our city becomes a place people flee in order to have a family, what will happen to property values as people move out just as they are beginning to move up the economic ladder? If property values decline, that will hurt the tax base, and could contribute to further declines.
In other words, are we headed for a repeat of the 1970s?
I hope not. But in order to reverse the trend of declining student enrollment we must take steps to make New York City more family friendly.
• We must increase affordable housing for working-class and middle-class families. Based on a median income for New York City of about $54,000 for a family of four, these economic classes can be defined as families with annual incomes from $27,000-$108,000. Currently, there are few, if any, new “affordable housing” programs that reach the lower half of this range; we must correct that.
• We must also build more schools and replace older schools with new buildings. We must also require not only that new schools be built in any new residential development, but also that the schools be completed before the residences are open for tenants or buyers.
• We must stop rezoning areas until we can develop a citywide concept of what we’re doing to our neighborhoods, to the residents of the affected areas, and to the city as a whole. Every time we rezone a neighborhood for the short-term benefit of a developer, we are forcibly removing the very people who made that neighborhood a desirable place to live. That concept must be rethought; they are also the people who are most likely to want to raise a family.
• We must increase mass transit alternatives, from high-speed buses to ferries to expanded subways – and possibly even light rail systems. Kids need to be able to get around, and driving cars is not an option. Families need to be able to travel together as well, to get to ball games, museums, and various other entertainment spots.
• We must create more parks and playgrounds, so that each residential neighborhood has enough space for children to play.
These steps must be taken soon, or it will be too late to reverse the declines, and the entire city will pay the price.
* http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/3651000.html
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End of the Baby Boom Echo
Families are probably less likely to flee the city than they were 10 years ago, although once classroom spending is slashed to pay for the the 25/55 pension plan and the school go into a downward spiral, that may change.
What is happening is the large baby boom echo cohort is leaving school, and the children of the smaller baby bust (Gen X) generation are in school. That's why there is capacity shortage in high school while there are fewer children in the lower grades.
Even though baby boomers had fewer children than their parents, there were enough of them to substantially increase the number of school children. In addition it was an unusually high peak, because the first half of the baby boom (the 1960s generation) postponed childbirth longer than the second half (us stagflation babies), so some of my childrens' friends have parents 5-10 years older than I am. In NYC, this was turbocharged by a generation of immigrant parents and their children. So even though the decision to cut spending just as enrollment soared sent tens of thousands of my peers and their children fleeing to the suburbs, enrollment rose.
While the population is growing, it is the double-shot of those baby boomers (some returning from the suburbs) and their children (pouring into NYC from everywhere) that is driving it up. Most of the new units are 1-2 bedrooms, and most of the 3-bedrooms are already occupied by those who bought at affordable prices (perhaps soon to return).
The question is what happens when the baby boom echo generation begins to have children and those children begin to reach school age. Will they stay in NYC, or will the city's education system once again be pushed into a nosedive that will drive they to the suburbs even if they do not want to go.
I expect the latter, with a combination of the 25/55 pension plan and disproportionate cuts in state aid to the city in the coming deep, deep, deep recession recreating the worst of the early 1990s, to the satisfaction of all the beneficiaries.