Bolting The Golden State

For the first time since the government started keeping track, more people are leaving California for other U.S. addresses than are moving in from other states.

Census Bureau data released Wednesday shows that New York and several other states also lost more residents than they took in during the latter half of the 1990s, but that is nothing new.

New York's net loss of residents to other states was 874,000, followed by 755,000 for California.

Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania also lost more than they gained from other states but — like New York — those states have lost residents to other states for decades.

California, though, hadn't suffered such a decline since the bureau started collecting statistics on migration in 1940, bureau analyst Jason Schachter said.

The data was part of four bureau reports released Wednesday, primarily gains and losses between states.

Counting births and immigration, California's overall population still surged 14 percent, to 33.9 million, over the 1990s.

The longtime retirement destination of Florida had the biggest net increase, with 607,000 more people coming in than leaving. Warm-weather states with fast-growing economies in the late 1990s rounded out the top five gainers: Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.

Soaring housing prices and a slumping economy in Southern California during the 1990s may have prompted some residents to find new addresses, said Dowell Myers, professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California.

Pamela Neuens, who moved from Huntington Beach, Calif., to the Phoenix area in February, said rising rent in California left her with little savings and no hope of buying her own place. She rents an apartment in suburban Chandler for nearly half as much as the $1,400 she paid each month in California, where she lived for 25 years.

"It's just that we keep reaching and reaching but you never get there because of the cost of living," said Neuens, a marketer for a real estate firm.

Nevada was the place of choice for the largest number of exiting Californians: 199,000 settled there.

Myers said a large part of the exodus may be due to immigrants and the state's large population of young adults simply moving to other parts of the country to find work, he said.

"California is a gateway. Some people pass on because there are not enough jobs for all these immigrants," Myers said. "I don't see this as a harbinger of doom."

California's foreign-born population rose by more than one-third to almost 8.9 million over the 1990s. Nationally, the 2000 census showed Hispanic population growth in large cities as well as small towns and rural areas across the country, especially in the Midwest and South.

California drew about 1.4 million residents from other states between 1995 and 2000 but lost 2.2 million of its residents.

"People are leaving urbanism and wanting to move where there is more space or more affordable housing," said Brookings Institution demographer William Frey.

The report was based on people's responses to a question on the 2000 census long form, which asked if the respondent had lived in the same address five years earlier. Those who responded "no" were asked where they had lived previously.

Overall, of the 262 million people 5 and older in 2000, 120 million, or 45.9 percent, had moved in the previous five years. That's about the same rate as the previous two decades.

Schachter said people in their 20s and early 30s are the most apt to move. Rates decline until retirement age, then increase, especially after age 85, when many people either are moved to nursing homes or closer to family members who can take care of them.

Those people who move out-of-state typically go to a nearby state.

One exception was New York-to-Florida, a longtime route for retiring New Yorkers. More than 300,000 people traveled that route between 1995 and 2000, the largest flow between two states.

Regardless of where they came from, Florida had a net gain of 149,000 residents age 65 and over from other states, more than any other state.

Two metropolitan areas that prospered during the late 1990s — Washington-Baltimore and San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose — gained immigrants but had a net loss in people moving out of the area compared to those moving in from other U.S. locations.

Despite the high-tech booms in these areas, that may be another sign that the real job growth came in lower-paying jobs. More educated people may have been lured to smaller, fast-growing areas like Austin, Texas, or Denver, said John Logan, a sociologist at the State University of New York at Albany.