Drought, wildfires and relatively poor schools all played roles in the exodus, but dominating everything is the cost of housing
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskEven if these declines were no worse than average—and national demographic trends are slowing, too—they might seem worse in a state where, as its governor once said, “the future happens here first”. In fact California’s demography is worse than average. The state’s total fertility rate fell from 2.2 in 2006 to 1.5 in 2020, more than in America as a whole, where the fall was from 2.1 to 1.6.
California is still young, but less so. The state’s median age, 37.3, is a year and a half below the national average but is catching up, having risen by two years in 2010-20. The over-65s were 11% of the population in 2010 but will almost double to 19% by 2030. The state’s 88-year-old very senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, is representative of her constituents in this respect.
. In 2019 median house prices in California were 184% higher than those in Texas. Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California, argues that exorbitant housing costs also explain California’s falling fertility, since couples who want children go to states where they can afford a family home—and even its relative youth, since large numbers of older Californians are cashing out and buying big retirement homes elsewhere.
Despite this, the state is less of a melting pot in another way: it used to be a place where everyone came from somewhere else. Before 2000, says Mr Myers, only 40% of 25- to 34-year-olds were born in the state. Now the share is 60%. The Beach Boys’ Wilson brothers were born in California, but their parents were from Kansas and Minnesota. Eddie Van Halen grew up in Pasadena to become one of the world’s greatest guitarists. His parents were born in the Netherlands and Indonesia.
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