It’s just that your statements are incorrect about families. The real numbers are: “In the county, children (ages 0 – 17) are 23 percent of the total population, in downtown, they are only 10 percent of the population.”
The thing is, the statistics have a long-tail, and the truth is that when the paradigm shifts, like it did and is doing, it's important to hear from first-hand accounts and not rely on statistics based on overall trends historically. They track an old dynamic, and the new dynamic is tending toward people living anywhere they want, especially into dense areas more comfortably, and the age-old bias toward moving outward at the point of having kids or retiring is reversing. I've seen it first hand, spoken to numerous people who are early adopters to this trend, and in all brackets of social standing and model of domestic life. It is evidence of an overall shift in how we live as people.
The benefits of being in the denser areas versus the believed drawbacks are changing, so much so it makes me genuinely hopeful about one day having 10 billion people versus 8 on the planet, which for someone who wanted less people not more, is notable at least and hinges on this shift. So I would recheck the numbers often and along new metrics, and favor first-hand information in times of change.
The benefits of being in the denser areas versus the believed drawbacks are changing, so much so it makes me genuinely hopeful about one day having 10 billion people versus 8 on the planet, which for someone who wanted less people not more, is notable at least and hinges on this shift. So I would recheck the numbers often and along new metrics, and favor first-hand information in times of change.