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Currently Texas is about ~24.7 million people and California is officially at around ~36.9 million people (although the L.A. Times reported today that California is at 38.6 million), making for a 12-14 million gap depending on sources.
Since Texas will be experiencing faster population growth than California for the foreseeable future, when do you think Texas will close the 10 million gap?
EDIT: I'm not asking when Texas will overtake California in population, only when will it come within 10 million.
Simple math can solve this quandary. I posted this in another thread using my very overpriced university education
Quote:
How long will it take for Texas to be the #1 state in population, using today's growth rates as a benchmark (flawed in itself, because population dynamics change all the time)? In order for Texas to be #1 in population, it has to beat California.
All things are equal, so we are going to use the US Census as a benchmark:
GROWTH RATES: Population Estimates (http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-pop-chg.html - broken link)
POPULATION ESTIMATES: Population Estimates (http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html - broken link)
2009 California Population: 36,961,664
2009 California Growth Rate: 1.0%
Any takers on who wants to calculate this out? I'm going to use an imperfect method to figure this out (rounding to the nearest 100,000) since I forgot the equation to graph these things out.
2009 difference in population: 12.2 million
2020 difference in population: (TX = 30.74 mil) (CA = 42.03 mil) = 11.39 million
2030 difference in population: 9.8 million difference
2040 difference in population: 6.6 million difference
2050 difference in population: .2 million difference
This is how exponents work. If all things remain equal and current growth rates hold, Texas will beat California in population AFTER 2050 using math. (800k less in first 10 years, 1.6 million less difference in 2nd ten, 3.2 million less in 3rd ten years, 6.4 million less difference in the 4th ten years). Think about it, both states are growing, but Texas is growing at a rate twice as fast as California. Using exponents (8 + 2 to the 4th power [since 4 decades are being analyzed) = 64) All Texas needs California to do is either slow down growing OR actually lose all sources of growth (including international migration), so Texas can catch up sooner by a factor of 10-15 years.
The short of it is..it will take at least 20 years if all conditions remain the same for Texas to be within 10 million of California. 20 years of Texas growing at 2%/annum and California growing at 1%/annum.
However, a lot can happen within 20 years. Hell, a lot can happen in 5 years. Let's wait and see.
I wonder who said "within 5-10 years". You guys make it seem like California is gaining no people at all, when in fact it has.
SACRAMENTO— California added 393,000 new residents in 2009, putting the state’s January 1st
population total at 38,648,000 according to the latest population report released today by the
California Department of Finance.
Location: Austin, TX/Chicago, IL/Houston, TX/Washington, DC
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It's going to be a good 15-20 years before Texas gets to the point where it's 10 million down from California.
Another thing to note are the conditions, things might not be the same, no one knows where our job markets and economy will be going in the future, and that plays a HUGE role in migration and population booms.
When will the state of Texas surpass the population of a combined NYC and Philadelphia - they would need to do that first
NYC and Philly combined CSA (they are continuous) 29 million (12,000 sq miles)
Texas 25 million (269,000 sq miles)
NYC and Philly need to surpass Texas in importance and prominence before they try to place themselves on our level.
I don't think anyone really cares about their CSA; we're talking about California and Texas. Stop trying to hijack.
NYC and Philly need to surpass Texas in importance and prominence before they try to place themselves on our level. I don't think anyone really cares about their CSA; we're talking about California and Texas. Stop trying to hijack.
well one in ten people that live in US do; or at least that is where they live
Northeast states just can't stand by themselves can they?
Our cities stand on their own; I do think the states are less relevant here in terms of association
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