Census Finds Ethnic Boom in Suburbs, Rural Areas : Population: Asian and Hispanic growth exceeds expectations. State’s white share continues to decline.

The face of California changed dramatically during the past decade, with suburbs and farm towns joining cities as entry ports for vast numbers of Hispanics and Asians migrating into the state.

According to 1990 U.S. census data released Monday, the most dramatic change in the state’s ethnic makeup took place in the heartland city of Fresno, which experienced a 626% increase in its Asian population. Similarly, massive expansions of Hispanic and Asian populations were found in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

Overall, the census found that one in four Californians is Hispanic and one in 10 is Asian.

“Clearly, we are seeing massive suburbanization of Asians and Hispanics,” said Leo Estrada, UCLA professor of urban studies and a census adviser to the U.S. secretary of Commerce. “I’ve been hearing all day from officials in outlying areas who can’t quite believe the figures they are seeing today. Places like Chino, Corona, Ontario, Rialto, Upland.

“They say the numbers can’t be real. The size (of immigrant populations) are two or three times what they were estimating.”

The numbers released Monday by the Census Bureau focused on ethnic composition of the state and its counties and cities, and they represented one of the first of several major summaries expected from the 1990 census. Over the next two years, more national, state and local figures will become available, measuring everything from age to income.

The new figures showed that the relative size of immigrant populations, while exploding in many new places, also has continued to increase in the state’s largest cities, aided in part by the flight of both Anglo and black residents.

In Los Angeles, Hispanics now account for 38% of the city and county populations, in comparison to an Anglo population of 41%. Unlike the Hispanic population--which has been on the rise, growing 62% in the city and 71% in the county--the Anglo population has declined by 8% in the city and county.

The state’s Anglo population, while growing 8%, continued a 20-year pattern of shrinking compared to the rest of the population. In 1980, Anglos were 76% of the state total; today they are 57%. Among the state’s largest counties, Anglo growth was greatest in Riverside County, 54%; San Bernardino County, 32%; Sacramento County, 20%, and San Diego County, 19%.

Anglo growth also was conspicuous in several sparsely populated counties in the northern Sierra, where many residents of the Bay Area and Sacramento have relocated.

For what experts said was the first time in the state’s history, urban black populations declined--3% in the city of Los Angeles and 9% in San Francisco.

Figures for black people include blacks of Hispanic origin.

In the 1990 census, the term Hispanic--as opposed to Latino--is used to describe people of Spanish and Latin American origin. They may be of any race. The term Anglo refers to non-Hispanic whites.

In Los Angeles, the decline of the black population is politically noteworthy because the number of blacks in the city, 487,674, is smaller than the number needed to make up a congressional district.

The county’s Hispanic growth, much of which is taking place in predominantly black neighborhoods, exceeded the expectations of local population experts.

“We were anticipating about 3 million (Hispanics),” Estrada said. “Instead, we got 3 1/2 million.”

While California’s rate of population increase for Hispanics and Asians slowed a bit from the superheated pace of the 1970s, the growth remained high--69.2% for Hispanics and 127% for Asians and Pacific Islanders.

Hispanic growth exceeded the statewide average of 69.2% in a number of urban and suburban locales, including: Riverside County, which recorded Hispanic growth of 147%; San Bernardino County, 128%; Orange County, 97%, and San Diego County, 86%. The Hispanic population grew by 62% in Los Angeles County.

Among the state’s 10 largest cities, Hispanic growth outstripped the statewide average in Anaheim, 122%; Santa Ana, 111%; Fresno, 105%; Long Beach, 100%; San Diego, 76%, and Los Angeles, 71%.

Asian growth surpassed the state average of 127% in the counties of Riverside, 352%; San Bernardino, 297%; Orange, 187%; Santa Clara, 162%; Contra Costa, 152%; Sacramento, 146%, and in six of the state’s 10 largest cities, including Fresno and Anaheim, 184%; San Jose, 194%; Santa Ana, 169%; Sacramento, 131%, and San Diego, 129%.

The Asian population in Los Angeles County grew 119% and in the city 74%. In the city and the county, Asians are 10% of the population, as they are statewide.

Estrada and other population experts said Hispanics and Asians are moving to the suburbs for the same reasons other people have been heading there.

“Partly, it is the search for inexpensive housing, suburbanization of jobs and the efforts of people to escape the inner-city environment,” Estrada said.

He said that suburbs increasingly are becoming ports of entry for new immigrants and not the second or third stop on the way to home ownership and middle-class living for the upwardly mobile. He said he believes that much of the suburban growth was a result of newcomers because the census figures for cities gave no indication of “significant outflows” of Asians and Hispanics.

The influx is already putting a stress on basic services.

“It’s having a major impact on school enrollment. Almost all of the schools are overcrowded,” said John Chiu, member of the Riverside County Planning Department.

Nowhere are the strains more evident than in Fresno, where the telephone book has as many listings for Vangs as Jones and where a rapid and large influx of Southeast Asians during the past decade has all but overwhelmed the city’s social service system.

Most of the recent immigrants to Fresno are Hmongs, from the mountains of Laos. Drawn to the San Joaquin Valley because of its rich farmlands, these allies of the United States in the Vietnam War have not fared well: Over 90% are on welfare. Many are in need of modern medicine but wary of it. Unable to mix with more cosmopolitan Southeast Asians, who view the former mountain tribesmen as naive and uneducated, they live in segregated communities and are barely able to eke out a living.

Immigrants also have changed the state’s capital and its surrounding environs.

Stores and restaurants, faces and languages never dreamed of in a small city once dominated by government bureaucrats have become commonplace, said Nancy Findeisen, executive director of the Sacramento Community Services Planning Council.

There have been problems with gangs and crime and strains on health care and welfare services. The new groups also have “enriched our community,” Findeisen said.

While the black populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco declined, such was not the case everywhere in the state over the past decade.

Sacramento’s black population grew 53% and now composes 15% of the total population, making it the second-largest black enclave in the state. Oakland is first, with 44% of its residents black--but up only 3% from a decade ago. Other large cities reporting sizable growths of black populations were Anaheim, with an 168% increase; Fresno, 42%, and Long Beach, 44%.

Confirming trends that have been in the making for years, the official head count of California’s residents shows that the overall population of the state was 29,760,021 in 1990, up 23.7% from 1980. In Los Angeles County, the population rose 19% to 8,863,164. The city’s population, 3,485,398, rose 17%.

Anticipating an undercount of minorities, a number of cities, including Los Angeles, have filed suit against the Commerce Department, demanding that it adjust the figures by means of a controversial sampling method under study by the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau.

James Paul Allen, a population expert at Cal State Northridge and co-author of “We the People: An Atlas of America’s Ethnic Diversity,” said the figures released Monday do not buttress the case of those who believe that large numbers were not counted by the census takers.

“Overall,” he said, “the county figures are higher than had been projected, especially for Asians and Hispanics . . . which suggests that the undercount may not have been as severe as some people have suggested.”

Los Angeles city officials were quick to dispute that contention.

“Traditionally, those from the minority community have been undercounted . . . by as much as 6%,” Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley said Monday. “If that tradition still holds true, today’s figures mean that as many as 210,000 minorities may have been missed.”

BACKGROUND

The 1990 census picture of California began to emerge in December, although it will take several years to release enough data for the image to be complete. The first batch of Census Bureau numbers put California’s population at 29.8 million, the most of any state; its delegation to Congress will grow next year from 45 to a record 52 seats. In January, the first details on cities showed Los Angeles has become the nation’s second-largest. Suburbs all over California also swelled in size and are now among the nation’s newest medium-sized cities. The Census Bureau says it will provide details on age, family size, income and other population features from its horde of information as it has time.