High prices — and price increases — are worst in Northern Virginia, where home costs rose more between 2000 and 2019 than any other metropolitan area on the East Coast, according to Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia.

Overall, births in Northern Virginia dropped by 8 percent from 2014 to 2019, according to data from the Weldon Cooper Center. The region wasn’t alone — nearly every major metropolitan area in Virginia, with the exception of Lynchburg, recorded a drop over the same time period.