This week came with the news that at the city’s most prestigious independent schools
tuition will exceeded $70,000 a year this fall. Meanwhile,
Manhattan rents hit their third-highest level on record, up nearly 8% from 2025 and more than double the annual inflation rate, with no signs of slowing. The median rent in Manhattan was $4,695 last month.
When it comes to luxury sales, the first week of February marked the most weekly contract signings for homes asking eight figures since October 2024,
The Real Deal reports. “Of the 36 contracts signed for homes asking at least $2 million the first week of February, 13 were for properties priced at $10 million or higher.” An unprecedented 64% of Manhattan’s condos and co-ops sold in 2025 went to all-cash buyers,
according to Douglas Elliman, almost 90% of Manhattan sales over $3 million were paid for in cash,
the NYT reports.
The people laying out for expensive condos and private school tuitions also appear to be the families having the most children. The most recent
personal income tax return tables (from 2023), show the relationship between New Yorkers’ income and how many children they have:
Once plotted, it is easy to see that the more financially secure you are, the more children you are likely to have. In NYC, that security comes from government support at the low-income end, and high incomes.
This feels counterintuitive, as we’re used to the notion that poor people have more kids than the rich. But it’s actually a return to norms: for the millennia of human history through the 18th century, the richer you were, the more children you had.
“In countries at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, and the revolutions in living standards and life expectancy that followed, birth rates fell. Within these increasingly wealthy countries, it was the affluent and educated — with education becoming a key marker of status — who led the way in reducing family size,” Justin Fox writes in Bloomberg. “Researchers have been finding more and more evidence that, among and within countries that have already passed through what’s generally called demographic transition, the old, positive relationship between status and affluence on the one hand and number of children on the other is beginning to reestablish itself.”
The best-off New York families have more children than the rest, and more of the wealthier families have children, even though the absolute numbers are tiny by comparison.
I’m not suggesting anyone pity the poor rich. But as the “affordability” debate bubbles on, it’s remarkable how far up the income bracket you can go and still feel squeezed.
According to the City Comptroller, one
needs to have an income of about $350,000 to comfortably afford a child in New York. If you plan to send your children to the exclusive independent schools, that number is likely double. And when you make that much money, you have some expectations about the kind of life you should be leading, which locks you in with higher fixed costs — an appropriate 3-bedroom apartment in a doorman building (~$120,000), the right schools for the kids (~$140,000), and you have already spent half of your after-tax income.
While having a big family may be the
ultimate status symbol, even the wealthy tend to move out of the city once they have 3 kids, realtors tell me. Finding the ‘right’ 4-bedroom property, and getting into the ‘right’ school in New York is hard even when you have the money.
