State News
Population Boom, Massive Diversity Change Face of California
By Sharifah Chammas
Jul 26, 2007 - 2:19:01 PM

Population Boom and Massive Diversity Changes Golden State’s Colors Lines

 An Intimate Look at the Future Face of Los Angeles

By: Sharifah Chammas

sharifah@canyon-news.com

 

A real melting pot: The children at Kiaie's daycare caught off guard. Photo by Sharifah Chammas.

LOS ANGELES – At Kiaie’s Family Day Care, a small, homey day care and preschool in West Los Angeles, the entire day care - from its staff members to its infants, to toddlers and five-year-olds scurrying about -  provides a colorful and harmonious picture of California’s rapidly increasing racial diversity and multi-culturalism.   A predominantly Hispanic staff monitors the young charges – a melting pot of children from multiracial, Hispanic, African American, Asian and white backgrounds.  It’s is a microcosm of the future of Los Angeles.

Between California’s recently projected population boom and demographic transformation, the state’s color lines are changing.

A July California Department of Finance report projects California’s population  balloon by 75 percent to 60 million people by 2050, with Los Angeles and Southern California showing the highest growth rates.    The population of Los Angeles County, which consistently tops the list as the state’s most populous county,  will swell to more than 13 million, with the addition of 3.5 million people by the mid-century mark.

In addition, to the growth spurt, the report also forecasts a demographic shift in the make up of the Golden State’s population.  By 2042, Hispanics will replace whites as the state’s majority racial group and comprise 52 percent of the population, the report states.  According to the state’s research, the death rate among white baby boomer has surpassed the groups birth rates. 

Hispanics will also constitute the majority population in 22 California counties in 2042.   

Higher birthrates among Hispanic groups, coupled with California’s immigrants predominantly from Latin America countries, also account for this transformation, according to the report.  The Hispanic birth rate is 2.3 children per woman compared to 1.8 for whites, African Americans and Asians.

Two of Kiaie’s Hispanic staff members – Patricia Parades and Graciela Alfaro – supply real lives and pictures to these lifeless statistical projections and theories regarding the growth of the Hispanic population.

Parades, 42, migrated to Los Angeles from Tijuana, Mexico more 23 years ago.   “This city is home to me.  I’ve lived half my life here and all my kids were born here,”  Parades says.  Parades has four children a two boys, aged 21 years old and 5 years old and two girls, 13 year old  and newborn  a mere 15 months old.

And according to the state’s report, Parades, her five kids, represent of the future majority of Golden State.

Graciela Alfaro, 45, from El Salvador and Patricia Parades, 42,(right) from Tijuana, Mexico.

Care giver Alfaro, immigrated to Los Angeles from El Salvador 19 years ago.  Alfaro, 45, lives with her husband.   She had to leave her two children behind in El Salvador because of the difficulty  they encountered trying to immigrate to California.  Despite missing her children and family, Alfaro says, “I like California more than any other place.”

While Hispanics will make up more than half of states population in 2050, whites will comprise 26 percent, Asians 13 percent and African Americans 5 percent.  American Indian and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander population will each make up less than 1 percent of the state’s population.  A relatively new and tricky category, multiracial residents, are projected make up 2 percent of California’s population. 

The Census Bureau used the multiracial category for the first time in 2000.  “The Census Bureau held hearings around nation trying gather information about what comes into play when people identify themselves and found strong advocacy and need for the multiracial category,” said Mary Heim, who heads California’s demographic research unit.  In 2000, the Census Bureau – which is separate from the Department of Finance – reported  six percent of California’s population as multiracial. 

“It is difficult to have complete coverage of multiracial numbers or have everyone on the same about what multiracial is,”  Heim said in a July 26 interview.   

A spike in interracial marriages combined with new ideas about how multiracial identify themselves contributes to the surge in California’s sizeable multiracial population.  A glance at the children in Kiaie’s daycare shows the prevalence of racial mixing with the coloring, physical features and characteristics of most children defying any notions of racial categorization based on looks.

As gauged by all the hoopla about the July report, it’s clear the report struck a cord throughout the state. 

“I have received a lot of reaction the report.  This study seemed to interest people so it got a lot more attention than previous studies, which reported similar findings,” Heim said.