America needs to make its cities family-friendly again

The Trump administration is weighing a series of measures to support families and reverse the US’s plunging birth rate. But if the country truly wants to confront its birth rate crisis, it must go beyond incentives and make family-friendliness a national priority. American cities are at the heart of that challenge. They are among the world’s most inhospitable places for families and children — and that must change.

America’s birth rate has collapsed to near record-low levels, but that is not unusual among advanced western nations. What is unusual, however, is how dramatically birth rates have plummeted in its cities. Over the past decade, birth rates in large US urban counties have fallen twice as fast as those in rural counties. American cities are filled with young couples pushing infants and toddlers in strollers, but once kids reach school age many families head to the suburbs. The pandemic dramatically accelerated this exodus.