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Fewer Leave State When They Move

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Times Staff Writer

California has remained America’s growth machine in the 21st century, serving as a magnet for foreign immigration and feeding a surge of migration to Las Vegas, Phoenix and throughout the West.

But the exodus from California has slowed dramatically, as residents of the pricey coastal plain have moved to cheaper inland valleys instead of leaving the state.

The surprising result, according to a new study, is that three metropolitan areas in the Central Valley have joined the Inland Empire among the 10 fastest-growing major urban areas in the United States this decade. None was on that list during the 1990s.

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All trail the booming Las Vegas, which has set the national standard for explosive growth since 1960, expanding 1,200%.

“In some ways you can say Los Angeles is too big for California, so it’s moved to Las Vegas,” said demographer William Frey, author of a study released today based on four decades of U.S. Census data.

“But it’s also moving to Riverside -- and to Bakersfield,” said Frey, a visiting fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Los Angeles and the Bay Area have fed a population explosion in inland California that made Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario the nation’s second-fastest-growing metropolitan area from 2000 to 2004, while placing the Stockton area fourth, metropolitan Sacramento ninth and greater Bakersfield 10th -- with population growth ranging from 10.7% to 15.7%. Las Vegas grew 18.5% during the same period.

Conversely, the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas, hit by high-tech job losses and high housing prices, hardly grew at all and ranked near the bottom for population gains in a study of 88 urban areas with at least 500,000 residents, Frey reported.

The Central Valley served as the Bay Area’s “release valve” for migrants, much as the Inland Empire did for Los Angeles, he said.

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It’s telling that more residents moved out of Los Angeles County than from any other county in the nation in the last four years, Frey reported, while the Inland Empire, Phoenix and Las Vegas gained the most residents from so-called in-migration.

The movement inland has been propelled, he said, by the same desire that has sent a flood of Californians to other states over the last 15 years: the search for an affordable lifestyle, especially housing in recent years.

“I call it middle-class flight, rather than white flight,” Frey said. “The punch line is that California is losing more Hispanics than whites. It’s the middle class, overall, that’s having trouble with affordability.”

Gary Barkley, a 54-year-old carpenter from Huntington Beach, said he moved to the desert outside Las Vegas a few years ago for steady work building Steve Wynn’s new hotel -- “a big project like that draws a lot of guys from L.A.” -- and because housing was very affordable. Now his adult son has moved to Las Vegas too.

“My family still has a little beach cottage in California,” he said. “But I can’t afford to live there.”

Many California Latinos have moved to the Midwest and South, where they could afford to buy a home, Frey said, and many non-Latino whites with more assets have moved to neighboring Western states.

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But although California lost nearly 2 million residents to other states during the recession of the 1990s, it lost just 396,000 in the four-year period that ended in July 2004, according to the census. Indeed, the state Department of Finance reported this year that California has experienced a net gain from state-to-state migration in the same period.

Whatever the number of residents departing to other states, California still has gained 3 million residents this decade -- to about 36.8 million -- largely from births and foreign immigration.

Three California metro areas were among the highest in the nation for population increase, or births compared with deaths: Fresno ranked seventh, Bakersfield 10th and Los Angeles-Orange County 15th. Five of the top six were in Texas.

California has remained the nation’s No. 1 destination for foreign immigrants the last four years, with about 1.1 million, or 22.4% of the U.S. total, settling here, according to the census. New York and Texas followed with about half as many.

Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, also ranked as the nation’s principal destination for immigrants: The census found that more than 400,000 settled in the county in four years, Frey reported, compared with 176,000 in Chicago’s Cook County, which ranked second. Other ranked California counties were Santa Clara at fifth; Alameda, ninth; and Orange, 11th.

As a broader region, Los Angeles and Orange counties ranked second to metropolitan New York for foreign immigration. Together, those two regions lured about one-fourth of all newly arrived immigrants in the U.S.

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As California has become a main port of entry in recent decades, its attractiveness to migrants from other states has diminished, Frey reports.

In 2000, for the first time in a century, California’s population included more foreign immigrants than migrants from other states. About 26% of residents were foreign-born, while just 24% were from other states. Fifty years ago, after the Dust Bowl migration of Midwesterners to California, more than half of California’s residents were from other states.

“California was always the golden ray of hope,” Frey said. “It was the Gold Rush, then post-World War II prosperity, then the high-tech boom. Now the magnetism is more for the foreign-born.”

Demographer Hans Johnson, who has tracked the same trends for the Public Policy Institute of California, said Frey’s findings generally agree with his.

But he said Los Angeles County, more than the rest of the state, is a feeder of people to other states, principally in the West.

In the most recent fiscal year for which data are available, 2003-04, Los Angeles County lost 46,000 residents by outward migration, he said.

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And although movement to inland California is a fact, Johnson said it was important to recognize that many of the people who move to the Inland Empire and Bakersfield from the coast, and to the San Joaquin Valley in Northern California, have not relocated in the traditional sense.

“About half of those moving to the San Joaquin Valley are still commuting to jobs in the Bay Area,” he said. “That’s different than uprooting and moving to Las Vegas. They’re really still part of the Bay Area, just like the Inland Empire is really still part of the greater L.A. area.”

Willy Olsen, 42, a land broker in San Bernardino County’s high desert, moved his family from Garden Grove to Hesperia four years ago because he could still get a house and 2 1/2 acres for $178,000. His place would fetch $500,000 today, he said.

“The L.A. Basin,” he said, “has moved out here.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

An inward shift

Three metropolitan areas in California’s Central Valley have joined the Inland Empire among the 10 fastest-growing major urban areas in the U.S. this decade, while none was on that list during the 1990s. All trail Las Vegas. The rapid growth reflects a continuing population shift to the Sun Belt.

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Fastest growing, 2000-2004

(Rank, % population change)

1. Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev.: 18.5%

2. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif.: 15.7%

3. McAllen-Edinburg-Pharr, Texas: 14.7%

4. Stockton, Calif.: 14.4%

5. Raleigh-Cary, N.C.: 13.7%

6. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz.: 13.3%

7. Orlando, Fla.: 12.4%

8. Austin-Round Rock, Texas: 11.7%

9. Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville, Calif.: 11.5%

10. Bakersfield, Calif.: 10.7%

11. Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.: 10.1%

12. Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice, Fla.: 10.0%

13. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga.: 10.0%

14. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas: 9.7%

15. Houston-Baytown-Sugar Land, Texas: 9.3%

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Fastest growing, 1960-2004

(Rank, % population change)

1. Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev.: 1,200%

2. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz.: 412%

3. Orlando, Fla.: 371%

4. Austin-Round Rock, Texas: 369%

5. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif.: 368%

6. Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice, Fla.: 346%

7. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, Calif.: 301%

8. Colorado Springs, Colo.: 294%

9. McAllen-Edinburg-Pharr, Texas: 264%

10. Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-Miami Beach, Fla.: 258%

11. Raleigh-Cary, N.C.: 251%

12. Tucson, Ariz.: 241%

13. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga.: 239%

14. Houston-Baytown-Sugar Land, Texas: 224%

15. Dallas-Ft. Worth-Arlington, Texas: 221%

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Slowest growing/declining, 2000-2004

(Rank, % population change)

1. Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio-Pa.: -2.0%

2. Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, Pa.: -1.4%

3. Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.: -1.2%

4. Pittsburgh, Pa.: -1.1%

5. Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, Ohio: -0.5%

6. Dayton, Ohio: -0.3%

7. Toledo, Ohio: -0.1%

8. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.: 0.1%

9. Rochester, N.Y.: 0.3%

10. New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, La.: 0.3%

11. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif.: 0.4%

12. Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, Mass.-N.H.: 0.5%

13. Syracuse, N.Y.: 0.5%

14. Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Mich.: 0.8%

15. Akron, Ohio: 0.9%

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Slowest growing/declining, 1960-2004

(Rank, % population change)

1. Pittsburgh, Pa.: -13%

2. Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.: -12%

3. Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, Pa.: -8%

4. Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio-Pa.: -7%

5. Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, Ohio: 0%

6. Toledo, Ohio: 11%

7. Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Mich.: 14%

8. Akron, Ohio: 16%

9. Syracuse, N.Y.: 16%

10. Dayton, Ohio: 16%

11. Springfield, Mass.: 17%

12. Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, Wis.: 19%

13. N.Y-Northern N.J.-Long Island, N.Y.-N.J.-Pa.: 22%

14. Phila.-Camden-Wilmington, Pa.-N.J.-Del.-Md.: 22%

15. St. Louis, Mo.-Ill.: 22%

Source: The Brookings Institution

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