CFCE Blog

"Demography is Destiny"

By Loren Kaye
Posted 5/09/2007

Barone took a new look at American population dynamics in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (sub. reqd.).  He found that shifts occurring in four areas:

• Coastal Megalopolises (e.g., LA, NY, SF, San Diego, Miami, DC).  Americans are moving out and immigrants are moving in.  Low overall population growth.  According to Barone, Los Angeles/Orange County had a domestic outflow of 6% of 2000 population in six years, balanced by an immigrant inflow of 6%.  San Francisco/San Jose had a domestic outflow of 10% and an immigrant inflow of 7%.
• Interior Boomtowns (e.g., CA Inland Empire, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orlando, Atlanta, Dallas).  Big domestic inflow dwarfing immigrant inflow.  Big population growth.  Domestic inflow to the Inland Empire since 2000 has been 15%.
• Old Rust Belt (e.g., Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Milwaukee).  Big domestic outflow only partially offset by immigrants.  Small natural increase (births).
• Static Cities (e.g., Philadephia, Seattle, Denver, St. Louis).  Modest domestic inflow or outflow and modest immigration.

Barone observes:  "This is something few would have predicted 20 years ago.  Americans are now moving out of, not into, California and South Florida, and in very large numbers they're moving out of our largest metro areas.  They're fleeing hip Boston and San Francisco... The domestic outflow from these metro areas is 3.9 milliio people, 650,000 a year.  High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cses for the burgeoning immigrant populations - these are driving many Americans elsewhere."

Much more discussion, including the political implications and more numbers, are in the article.

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