...Costs, particularly relating to child-raising, are killing the urban middle class. Urban residents generally pay higher taxes and more for utilities, insurance, trash, and sewer than those living elsewhere. Manhattan is by far the most expensive urban area in the United States, with an average of cost of living that is more than twice as much as the national average; San Francisco, another city that has seen large-scale middle-class flight ranks second. The Washington, D.C. area, Los Angeles, and Boston also suffer extremely high living costs.

These costs are most onerous on the middle class, particularly those with children. This can be seen in the rapidly declining numbers of students in most urban school districts, including such hyped success stories as Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Washington, and San Francisco. Over the past seven years, for example, Chicago’s school system, which was run by new Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has declined by 41,000 students.

America’s core cities—including the borough of Manhattan in New York—boast among the lowest percentage of children under 17 in the nation. Although Manhattan had a much discussed “baby boomlet” (the borough’s number of toddlers under the age of 4 grew 26 percent between 2000 and 2004), once children over 5 are taken into account, Manhattan’s under-age population is well under the national average. This indicates there may be a process of exhaustion—both mental and financial—as the costs of raising children drain family resources. ...

Ultimately, in good times or bad, cities have to want a middle class to have one. And politicians, if asked, will genuflect to the idea of maintaining a middle class, yet their actions—on taxes, regulations, schools, development—suggest otherwise.

Indeed, in reality most urban areas have focused on creating what New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg famously dubbed the “luxury city.” To pay for often inflated public employee costs, the luxury city can only survive off the wealthy and on other groups—empty nesters, singles and students—who demand relatively little in the way of basic services like schools and public health facilities.

Labels: culture, family policy

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