Examples of adultless societies in literature easily come to mind (Children of the Corn, Lord of the Flies, Peter Pan), but not so for childless societies (well, not for me). Ironicially, childless societies are all around us.

These articles both describe the same things about the rising costs of living in their respective cities (Boston and San Francisco): housing prices are going up because the per-capita income is going up. Increased per-capita income is simply total income divided by total population. At first it sounds good (most people think about increasing the numerator), but in reality, it is the denominator that is shrinking. The presence of more incoming-earning childless adults and fewer income-depleting children are causing more money to be spent on civic things like housing and neighborhoods, restaurants, and cultural institutions (the things that tend to make a place desirable to visit and live), and less money to be spent on child-related things like schools and parks (the things that don’t necessarily attract visitors and press):

• There Goes the Neighborhood (Boston Globe, May 14 2006)
• Fortune Shines on Sunnyside (San Francisco Chronicle, November 20 2005)

When these childless people have children and need to upgrade from their apartment or condo to a bigger house, the factors that drew them to these cities in the first place are now responsible for driving them and their children away. Both articles identify their respective cities as having among the lowest per-capita child population in the country.