Dan Walters: California faces huge upheaval

If demography is destiny, as 19th-century French philosopher Auguste Comte first proposed, California is destined to soon experience an economic and cultural tsunami of monumental proportions.

This is the year the oldest of the post-World War II baby boomers turn 62 and can begin drawing Social Security benefits. That's expected to touch off a mass exodus from the state's labor force over the next two decades.

About 500 Californians celebrate their 60th birthdays every day. The 2000 census counted 4.7 million Californians 60 years and older. This number is expected to increase to 6.4 million by 2010, then zoom to 8.7 million by 2020 and 11 million by 2030, according to the state Department of Aging.

Despite the current recession, California employers see shortages in skilled and professional workers. As the baby boomers exit, these shortages in mechanics, electricians, nurses, teachers and other fields will become more acute.

With a third of California's high school students dropping out without diplomas, much less receiving post-high school education or training, will the workers be there when the jobs fall vacant? Will an educational renaissance produce a new generation of trained, or at least trainable, workers? Will potential retirees be enticed to remain on the job by extra pay and benefits? Will desperate employers lure workers from other states? Or will those employers, when able, decamp for other locales?

The baby boomer/retiree phenomenon obviously is not confined to California, and its population is actually a bit younger than the nation's as a whole, largely because of young immigrants and a high birth rate.

But immigration generates another demographic trend – California's evolution into a society with dozens, even hundreds, of ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The Census Bureau reported last week that 20.9 million Californians are nonwhite and that with its 57 percent "minority" population, the state trails only Hawaii, the District of Columbia and New Mexico.

Immigration, especially illegal immigration, is a hot political topic. Clearly, many Californians resent and resist the cultural change that immigration is creating, manifested in passage of ballot measures against illegal immigration, bilingual education and affirmative action by what has remained an overwhelmingly white electorate.

Resented or accepted, however, massive cultural change is an inescapable and unstoppable fact of California life. We are destined to become a state with both a diminishing, rapidly aging white population and a growing, much younger nonwhite population. One of the fascinating questions that arises out of that change is how it will affect the state's politics.

As noted earlier, the declining white population has been politically dominant, typically accounting for 70-plus percent of voters, who also tend to be substantially older and more affluent than the population as a whole. And the gap between voters and younger, mostly nonwhite, nonvoting adults has been a continuing headache for politicians because the two groups' priorities are markedly different.

Political pros, pundits and academics constantly mull over the possibilities of a surge of political involvement by the uninvolved – whether it would turn the state to the left, for example.

In a report released last week by a consortium of immigration-related foundations, Chicago-based demographic researcher Rob Paral contends that with 49 percent of California's adolescents having at least one immigrant parent, there's strong potential for a dramatic change in the makeup of voters during the next decade.

"It's jaw-dropping," Paral said.

If demography is destiny, California's future will be, to put it mildly, a fascinating tableau of change.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.