There is a stereotype that dense places are filled with singles and childless couples while low-density, suburban cities are filled with families with children. I'm sure this stereotype is true if one compares central cities to suburbs. It's true for Austin, for example. Children make up less than 15% of the population of San Francisco proper.*
But I was curious whether this stereotype holds when we compare apples to apples -- i.e., urbanized areas to urbanized areas. Are denser urbanized areas less likely to have households with children?
I thought the answer would be "Yes," but it is "No."
The chart below plots the weighted densities of the 30 largest urbanized areas (excluding the outlier New York City) against the percentage of households with children. As you can tell at a glance, there is essentially no association between the two:
The line is pretty darned flat. A 1,000 ppsm increase in weighted density is associated with just a one-tenth of one percent decrease in the percentage of households with children. (It is not a statistically significant association.)
This is counter-intuitive. It's also strange given the fairly strong association between weighted density and renting:
In this case, a 1,000 ppsm increase in weighted density is associated with a 1.2% increase in the percentage of households that rent. Weighted density accounts for about 30% of the variation in form of household tenure. It is a statistically significant association.
This is strange because families with children, who comprise the majority of households with children, mostly own their homes. Perhaps very dense pockets soak up households without children and leave more single-family homes for households with children. In other words, density might change the distribution of households within the urbanized area but not affect the overall composition of households. Dunno.
This is a pretty crude analysis so don't take it too seriously. But be skeptical the next time someone claims that densification runs off the children. It might just move them around instead.
*Dear friends without children: I am not exalting children or parenthood or denigrating those of you who are single (or those who rent). Promise. I'm simply curious about the effect of density on the urban environment, and the presence of children is a nice, easy variable to measure.
