Big Cities See a Baby Boom as Some Millennials Move to the Suburbs

• June 26, 2014

by Lark Turner

There’s a small baby boom underway in Washington, DC and other major metropolitan areas, Trulia reports.

A new study from the real estate data company based on the U.S. Census’ 2013 population estimates show growth of the youngest among us in New York, Washington, DC and Boston, while the millennial population grew in the suburbs of some cities, including Colorado Springs and San Antonio. Meanwhile, certain cities have begun to attract higher numbers of aging baby boomers. A key characteristic of those metros? They tend to have a large population of young people, Trulia says. They include Austin, Raleigh and Dallas, among others.

Trulia economist Jed Kolko worked out that while the “millennial population growth in 2012-2013 in big, dense cities was outpaced by big-city suburbs and lower-density cities and even by lower-density suburbs and smaller cities,” the population of babies grew in the biggest, densest cities, DC included.

Here’s a look at what cities showed the biggest growth in kids aged 0-5:

DC is in second place with a 1.2 percent gain in children.

Meanwhile, here’s where the millennial population jumped:

Kolko had this to say about what the growth means:

While the trends from the past year (2012-2013) are consistent with the trends over the past three years (2010-2013), these years have been anything but “normal” as the housing market recovers from the swing toward the suburbs during last decade’s boom and the fall in homeownership and household formation during the recession. The trends that are happening today may not last; they surely reflect current housing and economic conditions, but don’t necessarily reflect a long-term, permanent change in how or where people want to live.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/big_cities_seeing_a_baby_boom_and_millennials_start_moving_to_the_suburbs/8669