Features

A snapshot taken of California on a single day last year captured the most detailed look of the nation’s largest melting pot, a portrait that will help shape its future. 

The picture taken by the U.S. Census Bureau is suspected to confirm what social scientists have long believed: that the nation’s most populous state is also one of its most diverse, and growing more so every day. 

The numbers, which will be released later this month, may seem like material for policy wonks, demographers and number crunchers, but there’s a lot at stake and the figures will help chart the state’s course for the next decade. 

Details on the 33,871,648 residents counted April 1, 2000, will help determine everything from where a new congressional district is carved to how billions of federal dollars are spent, to where future roads will be paved. 

“The census is the only ballgame in town,” said Richard Rogers, a Sonoma County planner. “Aside from being all knowing and all seeing ... it’s the best and most accurate set of data. To that degree it becomes reality. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got.” 

Although much already is known from county surveys and birth and death certificates, the census serves as the once-a-decade basis for all other measurements. 

Birth records, for example, don’t track if a mother moves soon after giving birth. And death records may mark the fatality of a tourist from out of town. 

The information to be released toward the end of March — population counts from the county level down to blocks of about 100 people, broken down by race and divided by those under age 18 and over 18 — will be used primarily to carve up political boundaries determining districts ranging from Congress down to local school boards. 

The state gained one congressional seat as the population grew by 4.1 million over the decade. 

However, the state’s hopes to gain additional federal dollars was hurt Thursday when the Census recommended to Commerce Secretary Don Evans not to use statistical sampling to reflect the number of people, mostly poor and minorities, estimated to be missed by the count. 

The use of raw numbers 10 years ago cost the state more than $2 billion and an additional seat in congress, said Hans Johnson, a research fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco-based think tank. 

California has a disproportionately high undercount because of a large share of migrant workers, illegal immigrants and poor who are reluctant to report. 

As the population swelled over the last 10 years, the ratio of non-Hispanic whites shrank and the new figures could confirm that California’s minority population is now the majority for the first time. The Census Bureau projected last summer that non-Hispanic whites made up less than half the population. 

In offering the most detailed racial profile of the state so far, new figures will show how cities are changing racially and which neighborhoods are most integrated. 

For the first time, the Census Bureau last year let people select more than one of six racial categories. Combined with a Hispanic ethnicity option, there are 126 possible ethnic and racial combinations, giving the best look yet at the state’s diverse population. 

“It’s going to give us a real statistical portrait of the multiracial population of the U.S. and make us all quit pretending that these categories are a fixed and accurate summary of peoples’ ancestry,” said Michael Hout, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. 

City dwellers and youths are expected to be the most diverse, but suburbanites may not be monotone, said Christopher Williams, associate professor of geography at the University of Southern California. 

Compared with the rest of the nation, the Golden State should be more diverse. 

“The coasts are much more different than the heartland, the great square states that we all fly over,” Williams said. 

In coming months, information on age, income, education and home ownership will give county and city officials the more detailed information they need to plan for the future. 

In Sonoma County, for example, Rogers is anxious to see whether coastal vacation houses are increasingly becoming year-round residences because of a healthy economy and a high demand for housing. 

Census information ultimately will dictate where state and federal dollars are spent, where construction is needed, where schools and roads are built and where to provide social services. 

By combining race with other information, such as income, researchers can see how neighborhoods such as San Francisco’s Mission District, once predominantly Hispanic, is changing and becoming more gentrified. 

It will also quantify the exodus from the cities, beyond the suburbs to the “exurbs,” communities such as Tracy in the northern San Joaquin Valley, said Johnson. 

Businesses will look at population density and concentrations of poverty and wealth for marketing decisions, and to determine whether to relocate or expand. 

As state officials, demographers and planners wait to see the numbers, they also know to expect the unexpected. Surprises probably won’t come in large numbers, but in neighborhoods where data will show smaller evolutions. 

A decade ago, social scientists were thrown by a huge jump in Santa Ana’s population due to an influx in extended Hispanic families living under one roof. 

City planners said they weren’t taken off guard by the numbers, because they had been providing social services to the community. But what came as a surprise was a trend of wealthier families moving out of the Orange County community because there weren’t enough expensive homes for sale. 

Ultimately, the census data led to more housing construction at all economic levels, said Kenneth Adams, planning manager for Santa Ana. 

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On the Net: 

Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/index.html 

Public Policy Institute of California: http://www.ppic.org 

END Advance