By Mike Swift
Mercury News
Article Launched: 05/01/2008 01:30:38 AM PDT
California may be loosening its grip on two groups that helped define the Golden State during the 20th century: predominantly white baby boomers, who are now approaching retirement age, and Hispanics.
New U.S. Census Bureau data being released today shows the state's white population is shrinking - particularly in the Bay Area. From 2000 to 2006, the San Jose and San Francisco metropolitan areas saw their white population decline by more than 200,000 people, trailing only the New York City metropolitan area.
Meanwhile, Texas has replaced California as the leader in the nation's Hispanic growth surge. California is still adding Hispanics - but the growth of that population in Texas from 2006 to 2007 outstripped California's by more than 40,000.
What's happening with the white population is not classic "white flight," demographers say, but a departure of middle-income people for economic reasons.
"It's kind of an ongoing middle-class flight in an area that's very pricey," said Bill Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer who analyzed the census numbers. "I think the steady state for coastal California, especially the Bay Area, will be people leaving that can't afford to stay, given the housing prices and the cost of living."
Since the Bush vs. Gore election of 2000, whites have lost their status as a majority of the voting-age population in California, with their share of the 18-and-over population slipping from 51.9 percent in 2000 to about
47 percent in 2007.
Top magnet: Texas
For Hispanics, too, the California economy is driving changes in migration patterns.
"California has become less of a magnet overall as Hispanics continue to disperse to other states, including Texas," Frey said. "The Texas economy has been strong during this period, and because housing prices have been lower, . . . (the state) attracted domestic migrants as well as immigrants."
The new census figures show that for the second consecutive year, Texas topped California as the state with the greatest population gain among Hispanics - a distinction California held at least since the 1980s.
As recently as 2000, California was gaining about 100,000 more Hispanics a year than Texas. But Texas overtook California in 2006, as Hispanic growth in Texas accelerated past California's slowing growth.
California gained about 268,000 Hispanic residents from July 1, 2006, to July 1, 2007, the Census Bureau said, while Texas gained about 308,000 Hispanic residents. The census data does not include information on how many people are native-born or immigrants.
California still has the nation's largest Hispanic population, at 13.2
million people, as well as 20 percent of the nation's total minority population, according to the new data. Nationally, the Hispanic population grew by 3.3 percent from 2006 to 2007, reaching 15 percent of the total U.S. population for the first time. The nation's Asian population grew by 2.9 percent, while the white population grew by 0.3 percent.
Boomers' exodus
To demographers, one of the most interesting phenomena in the new numbers is what they say about the place of older, mostly white baby boomers in California.
"The baby boomers and California kind of grew up together," said Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California. "The idea of the Beach Boys and the Summer of Love in San Francisco, but also the sprawling of suburbia - all those young families and then all those middle-aged families - and now we're going to have a baby boomer silver tsunami in California."
Nevertheless, the new data suggests that on the cusp of retirement, boomers in their late 50s and early 60s "are definitely moving out of California," said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the Population Reference Bureau, a demographic think tank in Washington, D.C. "People thinking about retirement are still moving out of high-cost states like California in favor of less crowded, less expensive areas."
In the West, Arizona, Nevada and Idaho are the primary destinations for older boomers, where the new census numbers show rapid growth since 2000 in those born from 1946 to 1950.
"I think cost is a big factor," Mather said. But "it goes beyond the cost of living. Once people aren't tied to their jobs anymore, they have a lot more flexibility. A lot of people prefer to live in areas that are less crowded."
Whether boomers and whites will continue to leave is uncertain. Already, say demographers, there are hints in the new census data that the white population loss is slowing, perhaps because the housing slump is locking people in place.
But like a pair of intertwined hula hoops, Myers said California and the baby boomers will always be linked.
"California and the boomers came together and created a lifestyle," he said.