1-Way Population Shift Between L.A., San Diego

The traffic between Los Angeles and San Diego was mostly one-way between 1975 and 1980, according to population growth statistics.

The figures show that that twice as many people from Los Angeles County moved to San Diego County than vice versa.

The statistics compiled by the San Diego Assn. of Governments from 1980 census figures show that 64,605 people moved to San Diego County from Los Angeles County while only 29,853 left San Diego County for Los Angeles County.

The association plotted the statistics to show the population movement between San Diego County and the other 57 counties in California.

They show that 9,000 more people moved to San Diego from neighboring Orange County than the other way around. The pattern was the same for the population movement between San Diego County and Sacramento County.

The figures show that a total of 545,261 people from across the country migrated to San Diego while 348,525 people left San Diego County, according to Sandag demographer Jeff Tayman.

The discovery that more than 300,000 people moved from San Diego County came as a surprise to demographers studying population growth patterns, Tayman said.

“You always think of San Diego as being a place where people want to come and never leave,” added Tayman, who makes long-range forecasts on San Diego’s population trends.

Tayman said the county’s large military population has little effect on migration statistics.

He gave this profile of those who left the county: The majority were were between 19 and 29 years old and most likely to move to Oregon, Washington or Idaho.

Nearly four times as many Asians (40,961) moved to San Diego than moved away (10,697), and more than twice as many Hispanics migrated here (66,793) than moved (27,104), Tayman said.

More than 34,000 blacks moved to the county, while only 16,466 moved away from the county, he said.

Eighty percent of those who moved to the county were white, according to Tayman said.