Annie Lowrey: California is becoming unlivable

When you pull back the lens a few decades, however, the “exodus” doesn’t look quite so biblical. The number of outbound Californians in 2018 was no higher than it was in the mid-2000s—or the mid-1990s. “After the Cold War ended, there were huge federal cutbacks in the defense and aerospace industry, and the economy dried up in parts of Southern California,” says H. D. Palmer, the deputy director for external affairs at the California Department of Finance. “Exodus is a freighted word, but if anything was an exodus, it was the mid-1990s.”

So if Californians aren’t moving more than in previous years, why are so many places suddenly freaking out about the influx of Golden Staters?

Western states taking in new Californians might be more anxious about change than they once were. Texas, for example, has been the most popular destination for outbound Californians for more than a decade, consistently averaging about 60,000 to 70,000 new Golden Staters per year. But now the state is at an inflection point, between its history as a ruby-red conservative stronghold and its future as a more mixed state with blue metros and red rural areas. In this context, the next SoCal family that U-Hauls into North Texas isn’t just some nice couple with different taste in barbecue; instead, they’re potentially the demographic straw that breaks the GOP’s back.

And while California’s overall out-migration isn’t unprecedented, some states and counties are taking in an unprecedented share of newcomers from there. The number of Californians moving to Idaho, for instance, increased by 120 percent from 2012 to 2018. The number of Los Angeles residents moving to Dallas and Houston declined in those years, but the number of Angelenos moving to Plano, Texas, tripled.

California’s population problem isn’t just about adults who are leaving; it’s also about the kids who aren’t there to begin with. The biggest issue, you could say, isn’t exodus, but genesis.

Last year, I wrote that expensive housing in America’s richest cities was pushing away families with children, leading to a “childless city.” California’s biggest metros are on the bleeding edge of this trend. Since the end of the Great Recession, home prices in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco have increased by 70 percent, 80 percent, and 116 percent, respectively. This has driven middle-class families to either move inland or leave entirely. San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children under 18 of any major city in the U.S., and Los Angeles County has seen a 17 percent decline in the number of kids in the past 10 years.

Read: Silicon Valley abandons the culture that made it the envy of the world

Births are falling, due to declining fertility among all groups, including Latinos, who make up about one-third of the state’s population. And deaths are increasing as the population ages. The state's annual natural growth—births minus deaths—has plummeted from more than 300,000 in 2008 to 180,000 today. According to figures shared by the California Department of Finance, the median age is rising 40 percent faster than that of the rest of the U.S. population.