character
Youth (under 18)
Why this matters
Youth are residents under age 18. This share tells a community how many children and teens it is raising, and it shapes demand for many everyday services.
A larger young population means more need for schools, classrooms, and teachers, plus childcare, after-school programs, pediatric care, parks, and playgrounds. Planners use this number to decide where to build schools, how to route buses, and where families with kids are clustered.
The share of youth also signals a community’s future. Children today are tomorrow’s workers, voters, and neighbors.
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- U.S. Census Bureau — About the Child Population census.gov
Overview of how the Census measures the under-18 population.
- U.S. Census Bureau — Older adults outnumber children in 11 states census.gov
Recent data story comparing the youth and older-adult shares across places.
About the data
Calculated from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2014–2024), at the Census-tract level, with margins of error. ACS 5-year vintages overlap year to year, so the series is a rolling estimate; compare only non-overlapping periods.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.