October 05, 2004
California's Population and Assimilation
Those concerned that the Golden State will somehow degenerate into some kind of third-world dystopia because of uncontrolled immigration and out-of-control population growth can just chill out -- California is now reducing its population forecasts:
- The state's population will keep growing as the result of two things: immigration, and births continuing to outpace deaths. But the increase will be notably slower than once believed.
Demographic experts now project California's population to hit about 51 million by 2040 — 7 million fewer than they forecast a few years ago, according to new state estimates. The state currently has about 36 million residents.
So instead of 600,000 new residents a year, officials now project the state will average about 400,000 annually.
Declining Latino birthrates are cited as the primary reason for this adjustment, driven a great deal by second generations adopting upwardly-mobile, middle class American values when it comes to conceiving families and their lifestyle.
- Maricela Morales, a 33-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants and a graduate of Stanford University, is a social activist and a city councilwoman in Port Hueneme. She and her friends were determined not to have children young, she said.
"We saw how difficult it was for our parents: There were so many demands at work and at home that it didn't allow for a high quality of life with the children," she said.
The advantages of a smaller family "was something we'd heard about from our friends who were more middle-class," she said. "And we wanted it too."
Catalina Solis, 45, an office manager in Ventura, grew up in a family of seven children. "It seemed such a hardship making ends meet," she said, recalling how her father, a mariachi musician, worked at a steel plant in Vernon and her mother took factory jobs beginning at age 46.
In all, Solis and her six brothers and sisters — four of whom were born in Mexico — have had only nine children. Those children, in turn, have had only nine babies.
"We were pretty textbook when it came to assimilation," Solis said.
The piece also notes that fertility rates have dropped significantly among Latina mothers in the state over the past decade-and-a-half -- 2.6 babies now from 3.4 in 1990. I'm sure those early numbers were likely used as faulty inputs into California's earlier population forecasts -- all of which goes to show you that when demographers, forecasters, and bean counters gaze into their crystal balls, they end up making the same mistaken assumptions as immigration's pessimist detractors: that people don't change, they don't acculturate.