The mismanagement of California is reaping an unusual benefit: slower population growth. John Pitkin and Dowell Myers from the Population Dynamics Research Group of USC’s public policy school found that the 37 million people in the state will not increase in number the way the state did in the 1980s, when there was a 26% jump, or the 1990s, when there was a 14% hike. The first ten years of the 21st century saw a 10% rate of growth, but the researchers claim that the rate will be under 10% for the foreseeable future. Pitkin and Myers intimated that a large part of the reason for the slowdown in population growth was the diminishing number of illegal immigrants to California.
The Pew Hispanic Center says that Mexican immigration to the United States has dropped. Between 2005 and 2010, roughly 1.4 million Mexicans moved back to Mexico from the U.S. Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, thinks the trend is permanent: “I think the massive boom in Mexican immigration is over and I don’t think it will ever return to the numbers we saw in the 1990s and 2000s.”
California’s economy has been in trouble for some time, and it’s not getting better.
For seven months in a row, Comerica Bank’s California Economic Activity Index has been flat. Robert Dye, Chief Economist at Comerica Bank, stated:
The economic recovery of California has stalled as shown by another flat month for our California Economic Activity Index. Silicon Valley remains vibrant in an otherwise lackluster state economy. However, the drag from a still-depressed housing sector is a dominant and smothering economic factor for much of the rest of the state.
The economy of California is driving even those who have close to nothing to look for greener pastures.
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