America’s major cities are increasingly childless, an ongoing trend that was only exacerbated by the emergence of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In addition, spiking crime rates, increased cost of living and rising housing prices have pushed families out of U.S. metro areas, according to Manhattan Institute fellow Robert VerBruggen, who conducted a report that measured the family-friendliness of America's cities based on the data of 200 metro areas.

VerBruggen's research looked at which metro areas have the most children, where families with children choose to move and how metros area fare based on measures of well-being such as educational achievement, social mobility, social capital and child poverty. His research concluded that urban living can be made more appealing to families through increased educational choice and decreased cost of living.

"A pandemic, a crime wave, and a growing ability of knowledge workers to do their jobs without living in urban centers have only continued the decline of children’s presence in cities, especially dense inner cores," VerBruggen wrote. 

The data tool, which allows readers to see how each of the 35 variables he measured correlate with all the others found that cost of living emerged as the overwhelming reason for why certain metros areas attract more family migration. His findings also show an abundance of children in the middle of the country with noticeable stretches of "child-starved" regions on the coasts. 

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"As people become richer, families especially want more space, so they tend to go places where they can get more space and tend to leave more and more dense inner city areas," he explained. "Another dynamic that's come out since the pandemic has been that the rise of remote work … essentially if you have the ability to work from anywhere, those forces that were pushing people into cities kind of weakened a bit." 

"A lot of people moved to cities because that's where jobs are, cities have these really huge economic centers where all this economic activity takes place and if you can take part in that remotely without living there, that gives you other options that you didn't have before," he added. "I think that really accelerated the trend toward having fewer or fewer kids in dense cities."

VerBruggen explained that if someone enjoys living in a big city, values their single life and feels like they have to leave the city because it's either too expensive or because the environment is not suitable for kids, it forces people to make a difficult decision.

"My own sort of life journey took me from the suburbs into some really dense areas," he explained. "I lived in New York City for a while, and then as soon as we decided to have kids here, we were out of there."

"I think having cities that are inhospitable to family life, having cities that are really expensive when they don't need to be anywhere [near] that expensive because of the zoning laws, I think that that forces a lot of people to make really difficult decisions over where they live and whether they can have kids while they're there," he added. 

He also highlighted education, specifically school choice, as an important aspect of life that allows people to live where they want while also sending their kids to school somewhere they find acceptable.

"If family-size housing is expensive in big cities, so is private school," VerBruggen wrote in the report. "Those wanting good public schools must pay for those, too, because property values partly reflect the right to send kids to the school that the property is zoned to. School closures during the pandemic increased many parents’ sense of frustration and powerlessness over the workings of the schools to which they had been assigned."

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VerBruggen said one consistent through line he found in his research, based on the data of different variables, was the high cost of living which served as a huge driver of "childless" cities. He admitted that urban areas are likely always going to have a higher cost of living when compared to rural areas, but he doesn't believe the cost of living should be as high as it currently is. 

"They have these district zoning laws and a lot of resistance to changing them to allow more people to live there," he said. "I think if you bring down costs of living in cities, you can bring more families in there because they'll actually be able to afford to live there."

Another factor is the spike in crime across metro areas, especially since 2020, which has had a big impact on people's decision to move out of cities, he said. 

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"If you live in a suburb, you can live somewhere that's safe and you can drive your car to other places that are safe," he said. "Whereas if you're living in a dense urban environment, any kind of crime that happens is just far more present to you because it's harder to avoid places where crime is happening, so controlling disorder is important."

VerBruggen also said the cratering fertility rate is a civilizational level problem that is confronting not only big cities, but the whole country, so anything that can be done to make it easier for people to have kids is a good thing. 

"America’s overall fertility rate is well below replacement at this point, having fallen during the Great Recession and having never recovered," he wrote in the report. "The inhospitality of big cities to children, despite their attractiveness to young adults, could be one target for policy reforms."

"One can debate whether a childless city has no future, or whether, instead, generation after generation of bright young people could simply move into big cities and then move out again if and when they settle down," he added. "It seems much more obvious that a childless country has no future—and that having large population centers serve as hubs for childbearing-age young Americans, yet offer few attractive options after those Americans have children, can hardly be helping in this regard. It is very difficult to change fertility rates with government policy, so every possible lever is important."

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A Maryland man who received a pig heart transplant in a highly experimental surgery nearly six weeks ago has died, his Maryland doctors announced Tuesday.

Lawrence Faucette, 58, a 20-year Navy veteran and a married father of two from Frederick, Maryland, had end-stage heart disease and was ineligible for a traditional heart transplant when he underwent surgery to replace his heart with a genetically modified pig heart on Sept. 20.

According to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the heart appeared to be healthy for at least four weeks and doctors expressed optimism in the treatment. They also withdrew the drugs that were initially supporting his heart. Then he began showing signs of rejection. Faucette died Monday.

Faucette’s wife, Ann, said in a statement released by the hospital that her husband "knew his time with us was short and this was his last chance to do for others. He never imagined he would survive as long as he did."

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Attempts at animal-to-human organ transplants — called xenotransplants — have failed for decades, as people’s immune systems immediately destroyed the foreign tissue.

Scientists have begun genetically modifying pigs to make their organs more humanlike.

The Maryland team performed the world’s first transplant of a heart from a genetically altered pig into another dying man last year.

The first patient, David Bennett, survived two months before the transplanted heart failed. The cause for the failure was not immediately clear but doctors said signs of a pig virus were later found inside the organ.

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The first case, with its successes and failures, provided crucial data for the subsequent attempt.

"Mr. Faucette's last wish was for us to make the most of what we have learned from our experience," Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who led the transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center, said in a statement.

Faucette initially came to the Maryland hospital out of options and expressed a wish to spend a little more time with his family.

"He was deemed ineligible for a traditional transplant with a human heart due to his pre-existing peripheral vascular disease and complications with internal bleeding," Dr. Bartley Griffith, professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who performed the surgery, told Fox News Digital.

Around the same time, Faucette expressed his own hope for the transplant.

"My only real hope left is to go with the pig heart, the xenotransplant," Faucette said during an interview from his hospital room a few days before his surgery, as reported by UMMC. "At least now I have hope, and I have a chance."

At the time, Ann added: "We have no expectations other than hoping for more time together. That could be as simple as sitting on the front porch and having coffee together."

By mid-October, the hospital said Faucette was doing well and had been able to stand.

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It also released a video showing him working hard in physical therapy to regain the strength needed to attempt walking.

Then cardiac xenotransplant chief Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin said the hospital moved into the next step of the procedure: withdrawing medications to allow the heart to function on its own.

"We are withdrawing all the drugs that were initially supporting his heart," Mohiuddin, M.D., professor of surgery and co-director of the cardiac xenotransplantation program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said on Oct. 20.

Mohiuddin said Faucette’s new heart was then "doing everything on its own."

Then, it failed.

Mohiuddin said the team will analyze what happened with the heart. They will also continue studying pig organs.

Many scientists hope xenotransplants one day could compensate for the huge shortage of human organ donations.

More than 100,000 people are on the nation’s list for a transplant, most awaiting kidneys, and thousands will die waiting.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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