October 11, 2004

Name Droppin'/I'm Going Back To Cali

Last week's Census Bureau release of new 2003 census figures have generated a flurry of new punditry and forecasts in an attempt to comprehend exactly what the new numbers mean--especially for those of us here in California (sorry to be so Cali-centric lately dear readers, but the cusp of new national demographic trends favors the west coast--or the southwest to be precise). Here are a couple pieces today by several friends of mine illuminating these trends. Not to name drop, but why wade into the numbers myself, when these guys have already done the heavy lifting for me?

Assimilation and its Discontents: First, my friend Gregory Rodriguez -- who, I can attest, belts out one mean karaoke version of 'California Dreamin' after, uh, a couple beers -- picks up the meme about the impact acculturation has on fertility that I pointed out in last week's entry and breaks it down in more eloquent terms in his L.A. Times piece "Assimilation Happens--Deal With It". Excerpt:

    The cult of cultural preservation encouraged us to believe that contemporary immigrant ethnicity and culture are constant, if not static, over time. New immigrants and their children were expected to continue playing their assigned roles. We're astonished and disappointed when a third-generation Mexican American politician speaks poor Spanish, yet we'd never think of scolding Rudy Giuliani for his poor Italian skills or Barbara Boxer for her nonexistent Yiddish. Some post-ethnic Americans even romanticize new immigrants, particularly Latinos, as symbols of resistance to the anomie and cold commercialism of contemporary American life.

    But like it or not, assimilation happens.

    In a 2002 study by the Public Policy Institute of California, demographers Laura Hill and Hans Johnson discovered that higher educational achievement, lower rates of marriage and less poverty accounted for the decline in fertility among second-generation Latinas. In fact, it is the fast growth of the second generation of Latinos that has state demographers lowering their estimates of Latino population growth.

And in a description that fits our firm's vision to a T, he writes:

    Even as government, business and organizations strive to better reach the first-generation immigrant by crafting new messages and speaking their languages, they may soon have to reconsider their approaches because the number of American-born children of immigrants is exploding. Korean immigrant churches must offer services in English to hold on to their second-generation parishioners. Marketing firms are studying the eclectic consumer and entertainment tastes of the children of immigrants.

    The question of whether we view ethnicity as fluid or rigid is not merely academic.

Nope, it sure isn't. As an aside, for those of you who missed it, check out the interview I did with Gregory for our summer Dimensions newsletter here. (pdf required)

Don't Call It A Comeback: My occasional cohort and mentor, Joel Kotkin, co-pens a piece with Brookings demography honcho, Bill Frey, about Southern California's remarkable population growth since 2000. While the rest of the country wrote off SoCal a decade ago -- after a turbulent few years of riots, earthquakes, wildfires, and other assorted natural disasters -- this region has since rebounded in spectacular fashion, becoming one of the nation's top destinations for immigrants and domestic migrants alike, while it's other big city rivals have sputtered and shed people. To wit:

    Since 2000, the L.A. region has added about 800,000 people from other parts of the U.S., according to annual census data, more than any major metropolitan area in the country — a rate of population increase twice that of Chicago, three times greater than New York and 10 times that of the Bay Area. Even the city of Los Angeles, where the "stew of despair" was supposedly boiling over, has enjoyed a strong surge of post-2000 growth, increasing its population by 125,000 people (not counting immigrants from other countries), while much ballyhooed "hip" cities such as San Francisco, Minneapolis, Chicago and Boston have all lost population.

    --
    If fewer people are now leaving L.A., then the next question to be asked is this: Who is moving in? Interestingly, a close analysis of the 2000 census finds that the area continues to attract large numbers of well-educated, younger residents. This migration of Americans and their offspring, added to the continuing influx of immigrants from abroad, accounts for the bulk of the region's restored demographic dynamism.

Now allow me to wear my policy wonk hat for a brief sec. To be sure, while I do believe this population resurgence injects a certain level of cultural vibrance and youthful energy that is welcome here in L.A., I'm nonetheless concerned about whether our state and local decision makers will devote their attention to developing the requisite infrastructure capacity necessary to accomodate this growth. To do so requires that the state, particularly Southern California, build new housing, schools, roads, and communities more efficiently than it has in previous eras, in contrast to perpetuating continuing sprawl. This won't please all Californians--a point alluded to by the authors in their closing statements:

    Some local residents may object to a growth-oriented strategy — including new infrastructure spending — because of possible effects on the environment or, more selfishly, on their lifestyle, but the truth is that the region has no real alternative. Because of its growing appeal among young families, Los Angeles — unlike Boston, Seattle or San Francisco — cannot hope to age gracefully into a region of senescent yuppies and soon-to-be-expiring pensioners. For better or worse, we are still a young and growing region, and we need to begin acting our age.

More shameless plugging: Those of you interested in hearing more from demographic guru Bill Frey can peep my interview with him in our Spring Dimensions newsletter here. Enjoy!

Posted by thomas at October 11, 2004 05:59 PM | TrackBack