[mchanson]

It's not equally distributed. In Boston, MA area kids have as much autonomy as their parents wish to give them AFAIK. It's not uncommon to see 10 year olds in my town nearby they are doing all sorts of biz around town on their own.

[93po]

Literally any very low income area of any larger city in the US is the same. You see kids all the time walking around without adults. If they're very young (like 6 or whatever) they're typically an older kid, sometimes like around 10 to 12, but again this happens everywhere.

It's only middle class neighborhoods and above where people start to have strong reactions to this in a "won't somebody think of the children!!!" sort of way