The Great California Exodus - Hundreds Of Thousands Flee The State (Los Angeles: homes, neighborhood)

[jacobwilliam77]

Nice little report I just found -

Civic Report 71 | The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look

"California was once a powerful draw for Americans on the move—a golden land, “west of the west,” in Theodore Roosevelt’s famous phrase, where everything could be better. But that California is no more. Around 1990, after decades of spectacular postwar growth, California began sending more people to other states than it got in return. Since that shift, its population has continued to grow (at a rate near the national average) only because of foreign immigration and a relatively high birthrate. Immigration from other nations, though, is declining, and it is likely that the state’s growth rate may soon fall behind that of the U.S. as a whole. As a magnet of opportunity, the state now pushes out where it once pulled in.

What are the reasons for this exodus, and what do they tell us about how American states thrive or decline? To understand how California the cherished destination turned into California the place to escape, this study examined data from a number of different sources that have tracked the great exodus of the past 20 years. We draw on the most recent data available from the Census, the Internal Revenue Service, the state’s Department of Finance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and other sources. We have been able to use these sources to describe the exodus in unprecedented detail, revealing its drivers and suggesting things that other states can learn from California’s continuing decline.

California is a far more populous state than it was in 1960, when it was second to New York in population size, with 15,717,204 people. Since then, the state has grown 137 percent, to 37,253,956 in 2010. For comparison, consider New York, which grew by only 15 percent during that same period. On the other hand, Texas has grown faster over these 50 years—by 262 percent. As we’ll see below, though, it’s significant that Texas’s record reflects a recent sprint. Until 2000, its growth matched California’s rather than surpassing it.

Since the watershed year of 1990, California’s growth rate has slowed, and is now near the average for the United States as a whole. Moreover, the nature of Californian growth has changed. From 1960 to 1990, more than half of its population increase—54 percent, according to state Department of Finance estimates—was due to migration from other states or foreign countries. In this heyday of California’s desirability to migrants, net domestic migration from within the U.S. alone totaled more than 4.2 million, or 30 percent of the overall growth. So in 30 years, California took in enough American migrants to populate the entire state of Missouri.

But then, as we have described, the appeal of California withered. Since 1990, domestic migration to California has flipped to a deficit. In the last two decades, the state lost nearly 3.4 million residents through migration to other states. In other words, it lost about four-fifths of what it had gained through domestic migration in the previous 30 years. Foreign immigration filled the gap only partially. Inflows from overseas peaked at 291,191 in 2002 and sank to just 164,445 in 2011. Meanwhile, net domestic out-migration has averaged 225,000 a year over the past ten years.

In 2005, foreign immigration ceased to make up for the drop in domestic migration to California. Since that year, California’s annual net migration has been negative—more people leave the state than come to live in it. Natural increase in the resident population—births minus deaths—cushions the blow of this out-migration, but that, too, is falling. It peaked at 397,000 in 1992 and had dropped to 271,000 by 2011. With continued low levels of fertility and the aging of the baby boomers, natural increase will continue to decline and, in some areas, may already have shifted to a natural decrease. If all these trends continue, California may find itself in a situation similar to that of New York and the states of the midwestern Rust Belt in the last century, which have seen populations stagnate for decades, or even fall.

Who were the big winners in the migration game when California was losing? The answer is the same for both decades since 1990—the Sun Belt giants Florida and Texas, followed by other fast-growing southern and western states. Migration overall declined somewhat from the 1990s to the 2000s, possibly reflecting the more troubled economy of the second decade, especially at its end.

The states with the largest net in-migrations generally had their biggest gains in the 1990s, though they all continued to attract Americans in the 2000s. Among the big losers, California (like number-two loser New York) shed residents at a consistently high pace for the whole 20 years. Most other big “sender states,” such as Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, and especially Michigan, saw their out-migration accelerate in the 2000s.

In the period we studied, California’s out-migration was also high as a percentage of its population—6.11 percent in the 1990s and 5.8 percent in the 2000s. Just a handful of states had less success at keeping their residents. In the 2000s, for instance, only New York (8.27 percent), Michigan (7.12 percent), Illinois (7.09 percent), and New Jersey (5.86 percent) had higher out-migration rates. As that list suggests, California’s migration patterns now have more in common with large northeastern and Rust Belt states than with other Sun Belt or western states.

California is still contributing to the population boom of the southwestern U.S. but now seems to do so mainly by sending residents to neighboring states. The fastest-growing state in the nation, Nevada, is also the one with its population centers nearest those of California: Las Vegas and Reno are, respectively, just a half-day’s drive from Los Angeles or San Francisco. Arizona is another fast-growing destination state in the California neighborhood."

[Fontucky]

Just what we need, another topic on this report.

[DMenscha]

Apparently, I'm going to have to dig out my hardhat again. The sky is falling.

[Bayarea4]

Interesting article, Jacob. Thanks for sharing. I personally don't feel that the so-called exodus is necessarily a bad thing. California cannot support an unlimited population and still retain the quality of life that draws people here in the first place. But it's a law of nature that things have a way of balancing themselves out. If a lot of people leave, demand for housing will go down and prices may become more affordable for those who have chosen to stay. Conversely, the popular destinations in other states find their home prices going up, and their natives complain loudly about newcomers spoiling their paradise. I have read many of those rants on this site.

I agree completely that for most middle and working class Americans, California has lost its appeal a place to escape to. Both sets of my grandparents, who were farmers, escaped the Midwest to California in the 1920s because land was cheap here, the weather was better, there were lots of wide, open spaces, and jobs were plentiful. Obviously it's not like that any more -- except for the weather. California has become a victim of its own popularity.

The elephant in the room, that few people want to acknowledge, is that this earth can only hold so many human beings, and we are reproducing at an alarming rate. When population grows unchecked, quality of life declines. The environment is impacted, the price of everything goes up due to the law of supply and demand, and people get on each other's nerves because they are living in relatively close quarters.

Americans cherish the idea of "freedom" and don't like to think that the government is telling them what to do. This attitude makes sense in a land where there are lots of open spaces and your nearest neighbor may be miles away. It makes sense, too, to have a gun to protect yourself or to hunt for food when there might be plentiful game animals nearby, and if you were threatened by a criminal the nearest law enforcement agency could take as long as an hour to reach you.

The closer together people live, the more we need laws and codes of conduct to regulate our lives so we can live together amicably as possible. In densely populated areas you don't want some fool brandishing a gun. It's dangerous to the general welfare. But Americans don't like being told they can't do whatever they please like their ancestors did. So that's why there is so much resistance to "government interference," and it's a natural reaction to the fact that we are all living closer together than ever before. It's also a natural reaction to want to seek those wide open spaces, and that's why people are moving to places with fewer regulations and more rural underpopulated areas like Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Wyoming, Montana and Missouri.

In its boom years, California was mostly populated by people with an adventurous spirit who were willing to leave the safe, familiar places they were born in to look for a better life. That spirit is now leading their descendants elsewhere. It's the American Way.

[bradleyyo]

Originally Posted by Fontucky

Just what we need, another topic on this report.

my thoughts exactly

[Gentoo]

In California we love recycling, even if it's topics on city-data

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Gentoo

In California we love recycling, even if it's topics on city-data

…or governors.

[mydogstinks]

If ever there was a hostile environment for the middle class and small business, it is California.

Eventually all that will be left is the incredibly wealthy and those that prey off them.

[bradleyyo]

I wonder how many of these people bashing the state live in California or if they have ever even been here. In the San Diego forum, there was this poster from Texas talking trash.

[expatCA]

Originally Posted by mydogstinks

If ever there was a hostile environment for the middle class and small business, it is California.

Eventually all that will be left is the incredibly wealthy and those that prey off them.

What makes you think the wealthy are staying?

They may own homes, but they have a different State of residence, so no income tax. It is the middle class that is footing the bill and will do so in the future. Now if it is leaving and the wealthy are leaving, who pays?