This research brief is the second in our three-part Empty Desks series, looking at the declining school-aged population in Boston (and the surrounding region) and how this and other demographic trends contribute to increasing school segregation. Some of this work is updated from our 2020 report Kids Today, and some is new.

Diversity makes cities vibrant, dynamic, adaptive and strong. Driven by global immigration, Boston has gotten much more racially diverse in recent years, with new families coming from places like China, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and India. We also have diversity across industries, making our economy more flexible and resilient. But there’s a way in which the rich tapestry of our city has eroded: We’re rapidly losing families with children. Even though our city’s total population has increased from a low point in 1980, our school-aged population has declined at the same time. And we’ve seen a growing mismatch between the demographics of the city overall and the demographics of students attending Boston schools.

According to the BPDA’s best estimate, Boston’s population increased 24 percent from 1980 to 2022, but the number of 5- to 17-year-olds decreased by 29 percent at the same time. And were it not for immigration, Boston’s school-aged population would have decreased even further.

There are many factors behind this declining school-aged population. Americans overall are having fewer children, and Massachusetts has one of the lowest fertility rates in the whole country. Boston is also one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. And many parents have concerns about the quality of the city’s public schools.

These factors together mean that the children who remain in the city tend to look different from Boston as a whole. More than three-quarters of children between the ages of 5 and 17 living in the city are people of color. By contrast, every other age category in Boston is significantly more likely to be White.

This suggests that many families remain in Boston when they have babies and preschoolers, but for White families especially, there’s a significant exodus when these kids turn 5 (roughly the age for beginning kindergarten).

Boston’s got a lot going for it, but we’re gradually becoming a city of high-income, childless professionals. We’ve also seen growth in the number of lower-income families, in part driven by those who are fortunate enough to get off waitlists and secure subsidized housing. But we’re losing other families who can’t afford the city’s rising housing costs. So, here in part 2 of Empty Desks, we dive deep into how broader population trends in Boston are contributing to declining enrollment and the increasing segregation of kids in Boston schools.

Race and Income of Kids Living in Boston

There’s an important income dynamic to these trends. The families with kids who live in Boston tend much more to be low-income than the overall city population, able to stay in part because of Boston’s relatively high share of subsidized housing. Consequently, 70 percent of the kids living in Boston are living in low-income households, which we define as up to 100 percent of Boston’s median income (roughly $62,270, when adjusted for household size).

We should mention that there’s no objective way to define “low,” “moderate,” and “high” income, and estimates change depending on underlying assumptions. For this analysis, we define moderate-income households as those making between 100 and 200 percent of median income, a group that tends to be just above the cutoff for most subsidized housing programs. The smallest group of Bostonians are those most well off, making over 200 percent of median household income. We use these definitions throughout the remainder of this piece.

A related dynamic we see in this data is the departure of some families when their kids turn 5 years old, roughly the age of starting kindergarten. Analysis across age groups is difficult because we don’t have data that allow us to track the movement of individual kids and families over time. Fortunately, we can use Census data to break down child demographics by specific age bands. Though we’re analyzing a snapshot in time, we compare the number of kids across different age buckets and interpret that change as reflective of people moving in and out of the city. This approach is not perfect for assessing movement of actual families, but it is strongly suggestive of broad trends.

With this caveat, the below analysis shows that the number of 5-9-year-olds in the city is about 47 percent smaller than the under-5 age group, with many moderate- and high-income families leaving the city at around the time their kids start kindergarten. The drop-off is especially pronounced for high-income families, with each subsequent age group smaller than the one before. 

Meanwhile, low-income children tend to stay in the city, with a larger number of low-income 10- to 17-year-olds than for earlier age bands.

Next, let’s look at the intersection of these data by race and income together. While White school-aged children are somewhat evenly divided between low-, moderate- and high-income families, more than 80 percent of Black and Latino children are low-income, as well as two-thirds of Asian children. At the flip end, high-income Black, Latino and Asian children make up very small shares of their respective populations.

When we combine our analyses of race, income and age, we can see that most of the moderate- and high-income drop-off between under-5s and 5-year-olds is driven by White children. Higher-income families especially may be able to find housing outside the city or may decide to leave in pursuit of schools that are perceived to be higher quality. By contrast, low-and moderate-income children of color tend to stay in the city, and as the largest cohorts tend to make up most of the city’s schools.

Race and Income of Kids in Boston Public Schools

Next, let’s explore how these trends play out in terms of Boston’s public school enrollment. As enrollment has shrunk, the students who remain are increasingly Latino and Black (the plurality swapping from Black to Latino in School Year 2009-2010, or SY10). Notable too are declining shares of both White and Asian students, the former dropping to 12.8 percent of the schools in 2024, the latter to just under 7 percent.

This has led to an increasing divergence between the demographics of the city overall and the demographics of kids in Boston schools. While in 2022 about 57 percent of the city is made up of people of color, that grows to 87 percent for Boston’s public schools (including charters), and a remarkable 94 percent of Commonwealth charters alone (both SY24 data).

There’s also a growing mismatch between the income of kids in Boston schools and the city overall. Trend data on the income of Boston students is complicated by three measurements in recent years, so here we look at a broader measure of “high-needs” students, which captures students that are low-income (under any of the different measurement approaches), have a disability, or are English Language Learners. And here we see that over 80 percent of Boston students are “high needs” (as compared to the 50 percent of the city that’s low-income). Changes to the income component of this measure mean that comparisons over time are not perfect, but it appears very likely that Boston schools are now serving a larger high-needs population than they have in the past.