Steve Quayle News Alerts

August 5, 2003
By Genaro C. Armas

WASHINGTON – Though immigrants kept California's population rising, more people left the state during the latter half of the 1990s than moved in from other states, the Census Bureau says.

It was the first time that's ever happened.

Four reports being released Wednesday offered the most comprehensive look so far at U.S migration in 2000.

Only New York, which lost 874,000 more residents to other states than it took in, had a bigger net decline than California, which lost 755,000. Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania also lost more than they gained.

The figures count only gains and losses between states. California had a big gain when foreign immigrants were counted.

The longtime retirement destination of Florida had the biggest net increase of movers, with 607,000 more people coming in than leaving. Warm-weather states with fast-growing economies in the late 1990s rounded out the top five: Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.

The West had the highest percentage of any region of people who changed residences between 1995 and 2000. Fifty-one percent of people who in 2000 lived in the 13 Western states, including Alaska and Hawaii, had lived at another home in 1995. The percentage includes people whether they moved to a new state or just down the street.

The South, where 48 percent of people changed residences between 1995 and 2000, had the second-most transient population, followed by the Midwest at 44 percent and Northeast at 39 percent.

William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the California departures could be a sign that residents were fed up with high housing prices and sprawl.

Analysts also noted that although the San Francisco Bay area's economy boomed during the late 1990s, Southern California's economy slumped.

Next-door Nevada was the place of choice for the largest number of exiting Californians: 199,000 settled there.

"People are leaving urbanism and wanting to move where there is more space or more affordable housing," Frey said.

Holly Sharpe spent 15 years living in Los Angeles and Orange County before moving to Henderson, Nev. She headed west in 1997, she said, because she was "going broke" working in the music industry. She said Nevada was attractive in a couple of important ways.

"The cost of living was the most important, and a normal job market," Sharpe said.

Times are better today. Sharpe owns a jewelry design business and has gotten married.

"I'm so much better off now," she said. "Most importantly I'm not broke."

Pamela Neuens, who moved from Huntington Beach to the Phoenix area in February, said rising rent in California left her with little savings and no hope of buying her own place. She rents an apartment in suburban Chandler for nearly half as much as the $1,400 she paid each month in California, where she lived for 25 years.

"It's just that we keep reaching and reaching but you never get there because of the cost of living," said Neuens, a marketer for a real estate firm.

Overall, California drew about 1.4 million residents from other states between 1995 and 2000 but lost 2.2 million of its residents.

Spurred by immigration, however, California's population still rose 14 percent, or 4.1 million people, between 1990 and 2000 to nearly 33.9 million. Its foreign-born population rose by more than one-third to almost 8.9 million.

The state lost more residents to other states than it gained for the first time since the government started keeping track of domestic migration statistics in 1940, Census Bureau analyst Jason Schachter said.

The trend may be due in large part to immigrants entering the United States there, then using California as a springboard to find work in other parts of the country, said Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California.

The 2000 census showed Hispanic population growth in large cities as well as small towns and rural areas across the country, especially in the Midwest and South.

"California has been the recipient of much of the nation's immigration. The only way you can balance that is by exporting people out of state," Myers said. "These numbers should in no way be attributed as a setback to California."

The report was based on people's responses to the 2000 census long-form question, which asked if the respondent had lived in the same address five years earlier. Those who responded "no" were then asked to say from where they had moved.

Overall, of the 262 million people 5 and older in 2000, 120 million, or 45.9 percent, had moved in the previous five years. That's down slightly from the 46.7 percent of people in the 1990 census who reported having moved.

Schachter said people in their 20s and early 30s are the most apt to move. Rates decline until retirement age, then increase especially after age 85, when many people either are moved to nursing homes or closer to family members who can take care of them.

Those people who move out-of-state typically go to a nearby state.

One exception was New York-to-Florida, a longtime route for retiring New Yorkers. More than 300,000 people traveled that route between 1995 and 2000, the largest flow between two states.

Regardless of where they came from, Florida had a net gain of 149,000 residents age 65 and over from other states, more than any other state.

Other highlights from the reports:

–Nevada had the highest net rate of people moving in, gaining nearly 152 residents for every 1,000 people in 1995. Hawaii lost 65 residents per 1,000 people in 1995, the highest net rate of people moving out.

–There was a net increase of 510,000 of people moving into nonmetropolitan areas, though much of that increase came in counties near fast-growing metropolitan areas like Denver and Atlanta. Such areas are losing their rural feel quickly, Schachter said.

–Two metropolitan areas that prospered during the late 1990s – Washington-Baltimore and San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose – gained immigrants but had a net loss in people moving out of the area.

Despite the high-tech booms in these areas, that might be another sign that the real job growth came in lower-paying jobs, while more educated people may have been lured to smaller, fast-growing areas like Austin, Texas, or Denver, said John Logan, a sociologist at the State University of New York at Albany.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20030805-1914-wst-census-migration.html