Orange County Annual Survey : Fear of Future Appears to Parallel Growth

Dissatisfaction with traffic congestion and concern over rampant development, along with a growing fear of the future, have characterized the Orange County depicted over the past five years in UC Irvine professor Mark Baldassare’s Orange County Annual Survey.

The five previous reports have shown residents enjoying income and amenities that often far surpassed those of the nation as a whole. But they have also delivered a stinging indictment of what the 1986 survey called “the basic Orange County philosophy: high on civil liberties and low on social responsibility.”

Baldassare--a professor of social ecology and sociology and author of the 1986 text on U.S. suburbia entitled “Trouble in Paradise”--founded his annual survey of opinions on the county’s economic, political and social issues in 1982.

The results of his 1987 survey, partly underwritten by large firms in the county, will be released today. The surveys are based on telephone interviews with about 1,000 adult residents. Baldassare said they have a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.

Overall, the surveys show that while the county’s median annual household income nearly doubled in 1980-86--from $23,000 to $41,000--residents have come to fear the future more than welcome it as the 1980s have progressed.

In 1986, for the first time, a plurality of those surveyed--47%--said they believed the quality of life in the county would decline in the future. In 1983, just 35% said they expected a decline in their quality of life, while 40% expected an increase.

The problems of the county and the fears of its residents, Baldassare said Wednesday, are the price the county is paying for its emergence from the shadows of Los Angeles into a metropolis in its own right.

“In the course of five surveys, we’ve learned that Orange County is undergoing a transformation from a traditional suburban county to a new cosmopolitan community,” Baldassare said.

Specifically, he added, “the one thing we have learned is that our early assessments that growth and traffic were emerging problems in Orange County proved to be true.”

In 1982, 32% of those surveyed reported satisfaction with the freeway system. That figure dropped in each succeeding year, with just 10% of those surveyed in 1986 saying they were satisfied.

The percentage of those favoring construction of new freeways nearly doubled in the first five surveys, from 25% in 1982 to 46% in 1986.

And while most of those surveyed have supported controls on growth--65% in 1982 and 63% in 1986--residents indicated that little has been done to slow development. “In 1982, residents were just as inclined as they are today to say their communities were growing rapidly,” the 1986 survey reported.

As a trend, the surveys show that residents consistently support growth restrictions in their own communities but oppose them countywide. In 1986, just 31% favored countywide growth restrictions.

Baldassare interpreted this as residents’ desire to enjoy the rewards of broader economic expansion, while avoiding the undesirable consequences of development.

In Baldassare’s surveys, the politics of the county are tied not to any clear ideology but to personal interest, which he called “new fiscal populism.”

County residents oppose “welfare bureaucracies and increased social taxes for social programs,” but at the same time reject “restrictions on their personal freedom and life styles,” the 1986 report concluded.

Come Out Fairly Liberal

“In questions of personal freedoms,” Baldassare said, citing the issues of abortion and homosexual rights as examples, residents “have been more liberal than the rest of the country.”

With legislative delegations in Sacramento and Washington that are among the country’s most conservative in social matters, Baldassare said: “The nation’s image of Orange County, the image that is portrayed by our legislators at the state and federal levels, is different from what our political profile really is.”

Explaining the discrepancy, Baldassare said: “There’s a difference between what people want and what political parties have to offer them. The Republican Party has been able at least to offer candidates that appeal to the fiscal conservatism of Orange County.”

While Baldassare has called the cunty a national trend-setter in patterns of suburban living, he said that residents’ lack of commitment to the common welfare is a disturbing factor.

“In this sense, I hope the county isn’t the trend-setter for the nation,” Baldassare said.

While recent years have seen a growing national concern for the homeless and other unfortunates, his surveys show that the county “is lagging behind,” Baldassare said.

The professor linked this attitude--which he called “a high level of individualism”--with the county’s future.

‘Self-Fulfilling Prophecy’

In 1986, the survey concluded: “If residents fail to live up to their social obligations as wealthy and highly skilled citizens, the pessimism about Orange County’s future will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Yet, Baldassare said Wednesday, “if you look at the demographics of the county, you see a lot of potential to do good.

“If there’s something to be optimistic about, over time, as the sleeping giant wakes up, this could be quite a dynamo of a place.”