Pile on taxes, impose costly regulations on business, jack up
energy costs and what would you expect? A boom? Or the sound of
productive people fleeing? Declining migration and falling
birthrates have led to a drop in the number of children in
California just as baby boomers reach retirement, creating an
economic and demographic challenge for the nation’s most
populous state. “After decades of burgeoning population and
economic growth…the state now faces a very different prospect,”
said a report released Tuesday by the University of Southern
California and the Lucile Packard Foundation. The report,
“California’s Diminishing Resource: Children,” analyzed data
from the 2010 census and the American Community Survey to
conclude that the trend marks a “historic transition” for the
state. In 1970, six years after the end of the baby boom,
children made up more than one-third of California’s population.
By 2030, they will account for just one-fifth, according to
projections by lead author Dowell Myers, a USC demogra