Baby boomers, who helped define California during the 20th century, are leaving the state because of higher housing prices and living cost as they approach retirement age, U.S. demographic data released Thursday showed.
California's white population is shrinking, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas saw their white population decline by more than 200,000 people from 2000 to 2006, trailing only the New York area in the country, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data.
What's happening with the white population is not a classic "white flight," but a departure of middle-income people for economic reasons, demographers said.
Predominantly white baby boomers, now in their late 50s and early 60s, are moving out of high-cost states like California in favor of less crowded, less expensive areas, they said.
Whites have lost their status as a majority of the voting-age population in California since 2000, with their share of the 18-and-over population slipping from 51.9 percent in 2000 to about 47 percent in 2007.
Meanwhile, Texas has replaced California as the leader in Hispanic growth surge in the United States. California is still adding Hispanics -- but the growth of that population in Texas from 2006 to 2007 outstripped California's by more than 40,000.
California still has the largest Hispanic population in the United States at about 13.2 million people, as well as 20 percent of the country's total minority population, according to the new data.
Source: Xinhua
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