Society 5 min read By Bethany Hadley
Families with young children leave New York City as school enrollment falls below 900,000
New York City's public school system has lost more than 100,000 students in a decade as families with young children leave at twice the rate of other households, driven by childcare and housing costs. Comptroller Mark Levine warns the decline is 'not sustainable' and expects another 150,000 fewer students over the next decade.
New York City's public school system is shrinking rapidly as families with young children leave the city at more than twice the rate of households without them, driven by the rising cost of childcare and housing. The city now has 885,000 public school students, down from over one million a decade ago, according to City Comptroller Mark Levine, who expects another 150,000 fewer over the next decade.
The decline has left 219 schools with fewer than 200 students each, some too small to field a sports team. Levine said the city will have to consolidate schools with sharply declining enrollment. «This is not sustainable,» he wrote in a social media post.
In a statement, Levine said affordability is a major factor but not the only one. «Raising a family in New York City is increasingly difficult as the cost of living rises, and declining student enrollment is one troubling sign of that challenge,» he said. «We need to better understand every driver of this trend to respond with viable, data-driven solutions.»
Research from the Fiscal Policy Institute supports the comptroller's assessment. A June 2024 report found that New York City households with a child under six were 112% more likely to leave than those without. They made up 30% of out-migrants but only 14% of the population. Among New Yorkers who left the state after the pandemic, 36% cited a desire for better or more affordable housing, up from 16% before it.
«Families with young kids are twice as likely to move out of the city than the rest of the population,» Emily Eisner, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, told Fortune. «That's because it's really expensive to raise kids in the city these days.» She added that housing pressure intensifies as children get older. «There's basically no options for families to find an affordable housing situation.»
The cost of raising a child has climbed nationwide. LendingTree estimates the 18-year total at more than $300,000, with childcare the largest expense for families with children under five. Nationwide, care for an infant and a four-year-old averages $28,190 a year, which would require a household income of $402,708 to stay within the federal 7% affordability benchmark. The average two-child household earns $145,656. Parents spend about 20% of their income on childcare, and one in five spend more than $30,000 a year. In a BMO survey, 82% of parents said the cost of raising children has «gotten out of control.»
Housing compounds the strain. A buyer needs at least $211,970 in household income to afford a median-priced home in New York City, nearly three times the national figure, according to StreetEasy. Only 15% of city households earn $200,000 or more.
Declining birth rates are also reducing the number of school-age children. US fertility fell to a record low in 2024, below 1.6 children per woman. Births in 2025 ran about 24,000 below the 2024 total. New York City recorded about 110,000 births in 2019 and fewer than 100,000 a year since 2020.
Cost is not the only explanation. A city Education Department survey found that 40% of families who left the school system moved out of the city, citing a better environment to raise children, concerns about schools, and more housing space.
Eisner said policies such as universal free childcare and a larger housing supply would ease the decline. She pointed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani's campaign proposal to make childcare free for children from six weeks to five years old. «Those will play a significant role in bringing the cost of living down,» she said.
The Fiscal Policy Institute has called the outflow a policy failure that raises long-run fiscal and economic concerns. The people leaving are not the wealthiest: in typical years, the top 1% of earners leave at one-quarter the rate of everyone else. «I don't think they migrate because of taxes,» Eisner said of middle-income families. «They migrate because of the high cost of living, which really is about childcare costs and housing costs.»
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