About 84,200 Moved to County in Fiscal ’88

If you’ve been feeling a little crowded lately, it may be because you’re now sharing San Diego County with 84,200 new people who moved in during the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to estimates completed by the state Department of Finance.

That figure means 3,600 more bodies entered the county than in the 1986-87 fiscal year, which saw 80,600 new arrivals.

“It’s the largest numeric change of this decade,” said John Malson, a demographics research manager with the department. “Most of it is migration. The natural increase between birth and death has not gone up in dramatic fashion.”

May Not Be Accurate

But Jeff Tayman, senior planner with the San Diego Assn. of Governments, cautioned that the figures from the Department of Finance may not be accurate.

“The first thing you want to remember, these figures are estimates, not a census. The growth they’re showing, we don’t know that it’s the true number,” he said.

Tayman said the population growth is the result of a natural birth increase and economic prosperity that attracts migrants to the county.

According to the figures, an estimated 2,327,684 people resided in the county on Jan. 1, 1988. By July 1, the figure had increased to 2,370,100.

The most recent federal census for the county, taken April 1, 1980, showed a population of 1,861,846. Officials are preparing for the next census, on April 1, 1990.

For the past three years, each annual increase has included more than 50,000 people. Prior to that, the number never exceeded 40,000, Malson said.

Most of It Migration

“About 32% is due to natural increase . . . but most of it is migration,” Tayman said. “Natural increase is on the rise the last 10 to 11 years due to the ‘baby boomlet.’ The women who were born after World War II, the baby boom, have aged into the prime fertility years.

“When the baby-boomers finish childbearing, they’ll have a couple of children per woman, but there’s so many women in that age group.”

Tayman said the biggest contributing factor to the increase is the influx of migrants, from both inside and outside the United States.

“What is in part fueling the migrating is our economic growth. The economy has been doing quite well since our nation came out of recession in 1984,” he said. “It has disproportionately benefited from the defense money that has been poured in during the Reagan years. It’s really been a boon to our economy.

“It’s added jobs and attracted new persons to the region, and we’ve started to see another phenomenon: A number of people are moving into the county from L.A. and Orange counties and commuting to work because homes are cheaper here. We’re starting to see more of that type of long-range commuting from our northern borders, which is also contributing to this growth.”

In spite of the consistent increases, Sandag expects the growth to decline by 1995.

“We expect it to taper off to 40,000 to 45,000 a year over the next 20 years,” said Garry Bonelli, director of communications for Sandag.

Tayman agreed. “As the baby-boom mothers age out of the prime fertility years, (the birth rate) won’t be at the level it is today. Some kind of economic slowdown is inevitable, especially on the defense side. . . . As the baby-boomers move into the not-so-mobile years, the propensity of people willing to migrate will decrease as well,” Tayman said. “We thought things would slow down by now, but we won’t know the true magnitude of what happened until the census comes out.”