California’s Growth Rate

* Demographers tell us they make projections, not predictions. Your editorial (“A Demographic Lesson: Warnings about state population explosion missed the mark,” Feb. 13) stated that demographer Leon Bouvier in 1991 projected a state population of 50 million by 2011.

Bouvier actually made three projections--high, medium, and low. The figures you cited were from his high-level projections. His medium-level projection showed California reaching 50 million by 2016 and the low projection showed the state attaining that figure by 2040.

In recent years California’s population growth rate has exceeded that of India. When the Department of Finance last year released projections of the state’s population increasing to 63 million by the year 2040, it noted that the current population was running 15 years ahead of its previous projections.

Last year’s lowered growth rate of “only 1.4%” means that, unlike industrialized countries with a stable population, California still continues to grow at the rate of a developing country and added another 442,000 residents to its population last year.

The reason for this lower growth rate is a massive out-migration of Californians to other states, a net outflow of 252,000 last year. In the meantime both fertility rates and levels of foreign immigration have increased. Last year California absorbed a record 319,000 foreign immigrants. Because of the state’s high fertility rates (higher than any industrialized nation in the world), a near record 375,000 were added to the state’s population from the excess of births over deaths.

If California’s economy rebounds and if there were a concomitant reversal in the flow of interstate migration, California’s population would grow by a new record of nearly 1 million per year.

It is a sad state of affairs where the only hope for restraining population growth is a further diminishment in the quality of life--a diminishment effected in large part by the population growth itself.

RIC OBERLINK

Executive Director

Californians for Population Stabilization

Sacramento

* At a growth rate of “only 1.4%” per year, a population will double in 50 years. No country in the world has a sustainable economy, yet many people consider population growth and mass consumption to be acceptable. Do we owe anything at all to future generations?

MIKE MADRID

Lomita