[October 20, 2026] – Austin keeps growing, yet the number of children living here is shrinking. Between 2019 and 2024, the city’s population under 18 dropped by more than 17,000 children, roughly 9%. Families are being squeezed by housing costs, childcare costs, and the everyday challenge of making it all work in an expensive city.
A citywide effort called Generation ATX (GenATX) was created in response. Its goal is simple and ambitious: make Austin the best place in America to grow up.
What Is GenATX?
Mayor Kirk Watson launched GenATX in 2025. It is not a City Hall program. It is a privately funded community initiative that uses no city tax dollars. United Way for Greater Austin serves as its backbone organization, and Austin-based research firm CivicSol supports the strategy work.
GenATX does not try to create new agencies or duplicate existing services. Austin already has more than 300 youth-serving organizations. The problem is that they often work in separate silos. GenATX aims to connect those organizations around shared goals, scale up what is already working, and publicly track whether children’s lives are actually improving.
The initiative rests on three pillars:
- Healthy Kids — physical, mental, and emotional support for every child
- Safe Kids — environments where children are protected, respected, and feel they belong
- Happy & Successful Kids — purpose, life skills, and a joyful childhood
After a year of research and conversations with about 60 local organizations, GenATX narrowed its work to five priorities:
- Children’s earliest years (early childhood and childcare)
- Access to essential support (healthcare, food, and family resources)
- Mental health
- Places to connect and grow (parks, playgrounds, and community spaces)
- Pathways from school to careers
In fall 2026, GenATX hired Fran Baylor as its first executive director. She brings about 15 years of experience in family economic security, affordable housing, childcare, and workforce development. Her job is to move GenATX from research to coordinated action. Concrete goals and success metrics are expected to be shared with the public in early 2027.
What the Research Found
This summer, GenATX released a benchmark report comparing Austin with the 50 largest U.S. cities, with Texas peers, and with tech hubs such as Seattle, Denver, and San Jose. The results were mixed.
Where Austin does well: strong early-childhood health outcomes, high child safety, and the strongest children’s mental health system in Texas.
Where Austin falls short: relatively high child food insecurity, less access to parks and recreation centers than comparable cities, some of the lowest child Medicaid and SNAP enrollment rates in the country, and the weakest mental health system among its tech-city peers.
The report also found that Austin’s children are more diverse than its adults, and that outcomes vary widely by background and neighborhood. In addition, no data currently exists to measure whether children feel a sense of belonging, even though belonging is one of GenATX’s core focus areas.
Why This Matters to Austin’s Korean Community
Many of these findings describe experiences familiar to Korean families in Austin.
Access to support. Low enrollment in programs like children’s Medicaid and SNAP often reflects barriers rather than a lack of need. Language, unfamiliar paperwork, and uncertainty about eligibility can keep immigrant and first-generation families from benefits their children qualify for. A coordinated effort focused on access is an opening for bilingual outreach and community-trusted guidance.
Mental health. Mental health remains a hard subject to raise in many Korean households. Children who grow up between two cultures can face pressures that are hard to put into words. As GenATX builds out its mental health priority, culturally aware and Korean-speaking resources should be part of that conversation.
Belonging. Korean-American children often hold two identities at once. Korean language schools, cultural programs, churches, and community events are places where many of them first feel fully at home. These spaces are exactly the “places to connect and grow” GenATX hopes to strengthen.
Affordability and childcare. Young Korean families feel the same pressure as everyone else: housing costs, childcare costs, and the question of whether Austin is still a place where they can raise children. A citywide push on early childhood and family stability directly affects whether our community’s next generation grows up here.
Why It Matters to Korean-Owned Businesses
GenATX is also a business story.
- Families are customers. Restaurants, markets, tutoring and after-school programs, clinics, and service businesses all depend on families choosing to live and stay in Austin. A city that keeps losing children is a city that loses future customers.
- Career pathways need employers. One of the five priorities is connecting students to careers. Korean-owned businesses can offer internships, mentorship, and first jobs, especially for bilingual young people who can bridge languages and cultures. With a growing Korean industrial and business presence across Central Texas, the opportunity for local youth is real.
- Family-friendly workplaces matter. Flexible schedules, support for working parents, and community involvement help businesses retain good employees, and they contribute directly to the kind of city GenATX is trying to build.
- Business has a seat at the table. Local and national companies are already funding GenATX. The initiative is designed to bring every sector together, including small businesses with deep community roots.
How to Stay Involved
GenATX is entering its action phase now, and its first public goals are expected early next year. This is a good moment for our community to pay attention and make sure Korean families are reflected in the work.
- Read the GenATX benchmark findings at genatx.civicsol.com
- Follow United Way for Greater Austin, which is leading the initiative’s next phase
- Share your experience: What has helped your children thrive in Austin? What has been hard to access? Tell us in the replies below.
We’ll continue sharing GenATX updates here on the forum. When Austin becomes a better place to grow up, our children, our families, and our businesses all benefit.
