Archive: Demographics

The state's population is officially nudging 40 million and Los Angeles has gone over four million.

The net loss to domestic migration is closer to one million. Which destination state was (again) the most popular?

Cities aren’t gentrifying by master plan, but because young people with money to spend want to live there.

Take away the big two from the U.S. map of languages spoken at home and the national portrait becomes really interesting.

The actual headline at Atlantic Cities is "More Billionaires Live in Beijing Than in Los Angeles." Check out the data.

It's not just labor. Elected officials such as Gloria Molina and Jose Huizar backed Wendy Greuel, but Eric Garcetti "represents the 2.0 model of Latinos in LA," argues the former editor of Ciudad magazine.

Men by a wide margin opposed requiring condoms on porn actors in LA County. Women, by an equally large margin, favored condoms. Blacks favored condoms. Whites opposed the new rule, strongly. Voters in the city of West Hollywood also rejected the condom mandate for porn films.

Increasingly, and perhaps inevitably, his subjects are the vagaries and cruelties of becoming elderly. This might be the least recommended direction to go in these days when media editors count web hits above all else, but I think it's his best material. No one else in LA reports this personally on the aging thing.

No, there are not 4.3 million immigrants in the city of four million, though the Los Angeles Times keeps saying there are.

The Guardian in the UK today published the first in a 7-part series on the Latino vote produced by USC Annenberg grad students over the summer as part of the News21 fellowship. "Across America an electoral giant is stirring."

The Times has caught on to the demographic shifts in the middle of the Valley that are finding places like Van Nuys taking in more Latin American immigrants from beyond Mexico. As the stream of illegal arrivals from Mexico slows, "the greater Van Nuys area, with its apartment-rich neighborhoods, has become a thriving hub not of Mexican immigrants as much as Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Ecuadoreans and Peruvians." Plus our pictures from the hub of the community.

For the first time in history, California-born residents constitute a majority of the state's total population. Native Californians are now the state's only majority. Here's one thing that could mean.

Since 1983, the percentage of Americans with drivers licenses has fallen for every age group under 40 (the magazine says 50, but the difference looks minor over 40.) The study authors say Internet use probably explains the declining interest in driving.

It's not just Lara Logan. The presence of Anderson Cooper probably helps too. But it's an interesting ratings trend. "The oldest newsmagazine on television," writes Brian Stelter in the New York Times, "might have figured out how to halt the aging process."

Peter Hong was a reporter at the Los Angeles Times who, he writes today, got his newsroom job because of the 1992 riots that tore up Los Angeles after the acquittal of white LAPD officers in Simi Valley. His career "roughly covered the rise and fall of newsroom diversity." Now he's a deputy to Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.

Senior communities are being changed from the inside by aging baby boomers. Headline for the Orange Coast magazine cover story: "Sexagenarians, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll."

Your loved ones will immediately read from your dull eyes that you don’t love them, never will again.

Mike Bonin, the chief of staff to Councilman Bill Rosendahl, posted to Facebook some illuminating census data about Los Angeles city council districts.

As of Monday, the Downtown blog will be under the banner of KPCC, the NPR station in Pasadena.

Pomona had apparently gotten used to being the fifth most populous city in Los Angeles County. Falling behind Palmdale and Lancaster hurts.

L.A. sits out trend on nonwhite children, more Grim Sleeper victims, Abby Sunderland's book, LACMA partners with New York Times, Nikki Finke plans her return and more.

One of the most eagerly awaited discoveries from the 2010 census (at least for me) is to find out how many people actually live in the Downtown neighborhoods after more than a decade of in-movement.

Long Beach doesn't get a lot of respect around LA Observed, or around Los Angeles generally. It fell to 7th among California cities.

Inland areas, led by Riverside County, grew the most since 2000. The coast, not so much.

The state may say L.A. is over four million, but to the U.S. Census Bureau we're at 3,792,621.

For the first time since 1920, California's congressional delegation will not grow in the shuffle of seats that occurs after each 10-year census.

This graphic posted to Flickr by Eric Fischer maps Los Angeles using racial and ethnic data from the 2000 census. Each dot represents 25 people.

Residents of upscale La Canada Flintridge live the longest of those in any Los Angeles County community: 87.8 years on average, according to a new report on life expectancy. Life expectancy is 15 years less in Westmont, an unincorporated area near South Los Angeles.

Each year around this time, the state's Department of Finance estimates the population for California and every city. Selected tidbits from the report.

he latest census data gathered at the request of Rep. Brad Sherman shows that Latinos are still the largest population group at 42.8%.

Poking around on a project I came across the state's latest population estimates for the 88 cities in Los Angeles County. Good to be reminded that most of the county's...

Daniel Hernandez is a former L.A. Times staff writer now working on a book in Mexico City. He's watching the continued outflow of talent from the paper and wonders, as...

Actually it's not so new, but the Koreanization of the suburbs in the northwest Valley has really taken hold. I think every church my parents tried to drag me into...

Author and Pomona College alumnus Verlyn Klinkenborg has another of his Editorial Observer pieces about California in today's NYT. The subject this time is the forecast that our fair state...

With Glendale and Burbank included the Valley's population is now 1.74 million, larger than every U.S. city except New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.

I haven't checked back to compare his past talk, but it feels like LAPD Chief William Bratton has been cranking up the rhetoric. In his latest monthly missive on the...

Time magazine's cover this week unveils its take on the "25 Most Influential Hispanics in America." Locals meriting mini-bios include Antonio Villaraigosa, of course (looking uncharacteristically sullen in the photograph),...

LAT Assistant Managing Editor Janet Clayton reorganized the Metro editors a bit this week to create a new desk to specialize in coverage of immigration, growth and population changes. One...

News item: The population of California is now estimated (pdf) to be 36,591,000. How do we compare? Only 32 countries in the world have more people. The next one we...