Seattle and D.C. child populations grew 10% from 2015 to 2024

Counts of lower-income children fell as counts of children in higher-income households rose

The population of children under 18 in Seattle and Washington, D.C. grew 10% between 2015 and 2024, diverging from other expensive U.S. cities that have seen their child populations shrink, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of census data, including some retrieved from IPUMS at the University of Minnesota. The analysis compared the 2014-2015 period with 2023-2024.

High-paying jobs and decent public schools appeared to be factors that spurred growth in both cities, the Journal reported, even as both remain expensive and have above-average rates of certain crimes. Many students in D.C. public schools do not meet performance standards, and open drug use is common in some Seattle areas, the paper noted.

Both cities experienced an influx of college-educated young professionals in the 2000s and 2010s, many drawn by high-paying jobs, and many of those professionals stayed once they started having children, the Journal reported. The University of Minnesota Law School identified D.C. as having the most intense gentrification of any place in the country between 2000 and 2016. In Seattle, many of the young professionals were tech workers, said Sara Curran, a professor who directs the University of Washington’s Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology. The adult population in Seattle grew 15% over the decade ending in 2024. The state has no income tax, and Seattle’s housing costs less than comparable job centers such as San Francisco, Curran noted.

“There are a ton of parks, lots of activities, it’s very outdoorsy. It’s comfortable; it’s not too hard to be here,” Curran said.

Universal Pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds, which became law in D.C. in 2008 — earlier than in many other places — was a draw for young families, said Yesim Sayin, executive director of the D.C. Policy Center. Families can also choose from schools across the city, including charter schools, she said.

“It used to be people moved to D.C., had children, and the moment the kids turned five they moved out,” Sayin said. “The district became much better at retaining families after they had kids.”

By household income, the composition shifted sharply in both cities. In D.C., the number of children living in households earning under $100,000 declined 9% over the decade, while those in six-figure households rose 37%, according to the analysis. Private school attendance in the city rose 37% over the same period. Seattle’s child population grew from about 100,000 to about 110,000 over the decade, with the number of children in households earning less than $100,000 falling 31% and the number in higher-income households up 34%. Even after the recent gains, Seattle still has the second-smallest share of children among the 38 U.S. cities with more than 500,000 residents in the Journal’s analysis.

Caitlin Bergo and her husband, Jeffrey Kiemen, took jobs in D.C. in 2019 and moved from New Orleans with their 1-year-old daughter to a rented home in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood. The prospect of free early childhood education gave them financial breathing room, Bergo told the Journal. Their daughter is now 8 and attends a bilingual Spanish-English neighborhood elementary school that offers trips to the National Gallery of Art. The family, which also includes a 2-year-old son, walks to a playground, a farmers market, and nearby Rock Creek Park, and commutes to work by public transportation.

“In our neighborhood, it has a really safe feeling; there are kids everywhere — everybody knows everybody,” Bergo, a 41-year-old government lawyer, said.

In Seattle, Mari Pierce-Quinonez and Austin Morton moved to the city in 2015 and eventually took tech jobs. The couple bought a home in the Beacon Hill neighborhood in 2020 and now live there with their three children, ages 6, 4, and 1. Pierce-Quinonez grew up in Berkeley, California, and Morton grew up in rural New Jersey, where his father commuted two hours each way to his job in New York.

“Neither one of those options sounded great. It was either too much driving or being extremely house poor,” Pierce-Quinonez said. The couple said they have no plans to leave: “Why move? We have a good mortgage rate. We have some good public schools nearby,” Morton said. Their elementary school offers instruction in Spanish, Chinese, and English.

Home prices in the D.C. suburbs rose more than 65% over the decade, compared with a 27% increase in the city, according to Redfin data cited by the Journal.

The growth in both cities’ child populations may be short-lived. Births in D.C. peaked in 2016 and have fallen sharply since, the Journal reported. The number of children under 5 in the city declined 9% over the decade even as the overall child population rose. Births in the city’s poorest ward, the eighth, which includes neighborhoods like Anacostia, are down 29% over the decade ending in 2024, while the relatively affluent ward four now has the most births. The racial and ethnic composition of D.C.’s child population also shifted: the number of Black children in the city fell 10%, according to the Journal’s analysis, while the number of White children rose 16%, Hispanic children rose 36%, and Asian children rose 71%.

In Seattle, births have also slowed. Seattle accounts for about a third of King County, and births in the county fell 10% over the last decade — a little more than the national average, the Journal reported. The Journal also reported that the D.C. economy that drew young professionals to the city had faltered since the pandemic.