Don't Go Quoting Those Urban Boomer Growth Figures Just Yet

"This may be a surprising headline to readers of The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, which reported virtually the opposite result in their August 19 editions. . . : that 1,000,000 baby boomers moved to within five miles of the city centers of the 50 largest cities between 2000 and 2010."

"In fact, the census data shows virtually opposite," writes Cox. By querying data from the US Census using the "University of Missouri Radius Tool", he finds that "[w]ithin the five mile radius of downtown, there was a net loss of nearly 1,000,000 baby boomers, or 2 percent of the 2000 population (ages 35 to 55 in 2000). There was also a loss of 800,000 in the suburbs, or 17 percent of the 2000 population." 

Mr. Cox has built a reputation as an ardent opponent of the “'return to the city from the suburbs' myth", so we'd hope a third party would conduct some unbiased analysis before one reaches any final conclusions.