A 1.3 million-person population gap

State and federal demographers released new estimates of California’s population as of July 1 and the data continued a polite conflict.

The state Department Finance declared that California’s population stood at 37.3 million on July 1, up 438,000 over the previous year, while the Census Bureau pegged the state at 36.6 million, up 303,000.

The difference between the two sets of demographers is almost entirely attributable to one thing – a million-plus-person disagreement on what’s happened in state-to-state migration since 2000. The Census Bureau believes that the state has lost a net of 1.2 million people to other states since the last decennial census, most to adjacent Nevada and Arizona, the nation’s two fastest-growing states. But the Department of Finance’s demographic unit believes that there has been a negligible loss at most.

The state’s county-by-county report is available here while the Census Bureau’s state-by-state chart is accessible here.

$72,000 for 'modest' life

A family with two working parents needs an income of $6,029 per month or $72,343 a year to maintain a “modest” standard of living in California, largely because of high transportation, child care and housing costs, a study from the left-leaning California Budget Project declares.

The income need is even higher in such high-cost regions as the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the publication, called “Making Ends Meet: How Much Does It Cost to Raise a Family in California?”

Housing is the largest single expense for such a family, the study found, averaging more than $1,100 a month, followed closely by child care. The report also surveyed expenses for single adults, single-parent families and two-parent families with one breadwinner.

The full report is available here.

State's population nears 38 million

California’s population grew by 438,000 in the year that ended June 30 and now stands at nearly 38 million, a new report from the state Department of Finance’s demographers says.

That growth was 1.17 percent, reflecting a steady erosion in the rate of California’s growth, although in constant numbers, it has remained fairly constant. And, as has been the pattern, immigration from other countries, plus a high birthrate, accounted for all the growth as state-to-state migration continued to be a slight negative for the state.

During the year, the demographers calculated, Californians had 565,169 new babies and nearly 200,000 foreign immigrants came to the state, while it lost a net of 88,761 in state-to-state movements. When 237,884 deaths are factored into the equation, the bottom line was a gain of 438,455, bringing the state’s population to 37,771,431.

Riverside County was the state’s fastest growing at 3.3 percent, followed closely by Imperial and Sutter counties, while two counties, Plumas and Sierra, lost population. Riverside, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Clara and San Bernardino counties accounted for nearly half of the state’s numerical gain.

The full report, released this morning, is available here.

California air traffic rebounds

Airline traffic in and out of California airports dipped sharply after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in 2001, but have rebounded to near pre-2001 levels, according to data assembled by the state Department of Transportation’s aeronautics office.

California’s commercial airports hit a peak of just under 179 million passengers in 2000, then fell to 167.5 million in 2001 as a severe economic downturn struck the state and to 159 million in 2002, but began rebounding in 2003 and reached 177.8 million in 2006.

Los Angeles International easily retained its place as the state’s busiest airport in 2006 with just over 61 million passengers, more than a third of the state’s total and nearly twice San Francisco International’s 33.1 million. They were followed by San Diego International at 17.5 million, Oakland International at 14.3 million, San Jose International at 10.7 million, Sacramento International at 10.4 million, John Wayne (Orange County) at 9.6 million, and Ontario International at 7 million.

The full report, which covers a full decade, and monthly reports are available here.

Property tax-education dilemma

California, having slashed its property taxes nearly 30 years ago via ballot measure, ranks near the bottom of the states in relative property tax load. California, however, also ranks near the bottom in educational achievement on national academic testing.

Is there a connection between these two bits of data? It’s one of the intriguing questions that arise out of a lengthy study of property taxes and their connection to education, conducted by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Nationally, more than half of the revenues flowing to schools come from property taxes, so education feels the pinch when states experience taxpayer revolts similar to the one that spawned California’s Proposition 13 in 1978.

California and six other states are singled out in the study for special attention and it notes that Massachusetts is at or near the top in almost every educational measure while its property taxes also are among the highest as a percentage of total state-local revenues.

“Those who have tried to reduce property taxes and improve school performance at the same time have not met with much success,” said Daphne A. Kenyon, a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute and author of “The Property Tax–School Funding Dilemma.”

The Lincoln Institute study was issued, ironically, as California wrestles with a severe state budget crisis and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seeks help from educators in reducing spending, since 40 percent of the state’s general fund budget goes to schools, thanks largely to Proposition 13’s limits.

The full report can be downloaded from the Lincoln Institute here.

Dropout-violence link found

California could prevent 500 homicides and more than 20,000 aggravated assaults every year by improving its high school graduation rate by 10 percentage points, a law enforcement coalition is telling Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators.

“Education reform is public safety reform,” Oakland-based Fight Crime: Invest in Kids told Schwarzenegger in a letter as it released a statistical study on the relationship between high school educations and criminal activity.

It noted that 68 percent of prison inmates nationwide lack high school diplomas and added, “One out of every three high school students does not graduate from high school, which in turn threatens public safety.” The group called for raising the high school graduation rate to 77 percent.

The letter to Schwarzenegger from the organization of high-ranking police officials and prosecutors is available here.

The full report can be accessed here.

Gas consumption in a slump

Historically, Californians’ consumption of gasoline and diesel fuel has grown much more slowly than its ever-increasing level of automotive travel, thanks largely to quantum leaps in automotive efficiency.

In recent years, gasoline consumption has been running just under 16 billion gallons a year, which is only a third more than 30 years ago, even though the amount of Californians’ vehicular travel has at least doubled since then.

In the overall context, that’s a good thing, since burning less fuel to go the same number of miles means relatively less pollution. But it has another consequence – less money to spend on highway construction and maintenance, since fuel taxes are based on gallonage, not miles driven nor the price of fuel.

While gasoline tax revenues have flattened, those from sales taxes on gasoline, which are based on price, have been soaring because of ever-rising fuel prices and that led, in turn, to a ballot measure that largely redirects sales taxes on fuel into transportation – thereby depriving the state’s general fund of those extra dollars.

The interplay between fuel consumption and public budgets now has a new wrinkle – a decline in the amount of gasoline being purchased. The total (including aviation gasoline) hit a peak of 15.937 gallons in 2005 but declined to 15.825 gallons in 2006 and is so far this year – due to price spikes, a cooling of the economy and other factors – is running somewhat lower, Board of Equalization chairwoman Betty Yee revealed.

While that means lower fuel tax revenues, sales taxes on gasoline continue to climb, nearly doubling from $1.7 billion in 2002 to $3.3 billion in 2006, thanks to ever-higher prices.

A month-by-month report on gasoline sales from 2000 forward is available here.

State revenues still lagging

The state’s revenues ran a bit over projections during November but are still lagging by more than $550 million for the fiscal year that began July 1, the state controller says in a new report.

The Legislature’s budget analyst, Elizabeth Hill, has projected that revenues will fall more than $2 billion below expectations for this year and, when combined with other income and outgo factors, will wipe out the state’s $4.1 billion reserve and leave the budget nearly $2 billion in the red by next June.

Overall, she says, the deficit for the remainder of this fiscal year and the next could approach $10 billion.

Controller John Chiang, in his monthly cash flow report, says that “thanks to corporate tax receipts,” November revenues ran about $62 million, or 1 percent, above expectations, while personal income tax and sales tax revenues lagged.

The full report is available here.

Slower job growth?

California has generally outpaced the rest of the nation in job growth for decades, but may have entered a period of less positive employment gains, the Palo Alto-based Center for the Continuing Study of the California economy says in a new data analysis.

Only the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley registered job growth above national rates during the last two years, while Southern California, including San Diego, and Sacramento saw softer growth.

The report suggests that “state policy leaders should take note of the ‘average’ performance of California’s job market over the last seven years and not automatically assume that the state will outperform the nation in the coming decade.”

The full report is available here.

Cal school kids becoming fitter

California’s school children are doing better on physical fitness tests, although fewer than a third score in the “healthy fitness zone,” a new report from the state Department of Education says.

“While I’m pleased these numbers are moving in the right direction,” state schools Supt. Jack O’Connell said, “this annual fitness test serves as an important reminder to all of us that the majority of our students are not in good physical shape.”

Generally, more than half of students in all three grades could meet individual standards in the six areas being tested but relatively few could match standards in all six. The report reveals that 27.1 percent of fifth-graders, 30.9 percent of seventh-graders and 30.1 percent of ninth-graders reached the standard goal in the six areas, but O’Connell says all three scores improved marginally from last year, continuing a recent pattern.

Test results both statewide and for individual counties, school districts and schools are available here.

Economy slows, but no recession

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other Capitol politicians got a bit of good economic news Wednesday when UCLA’s Anderson School, the state’s most prominent economic forecasting organization, concluded that while the real estate meltdown is hurting the state’s economy, a recession is unlikely.

“Like the national forecast, the central theme of the California forecast remains the same: real estate weakness will create a sluggish economy, but will not be enough to tip the state into a recession,” UCLA economists Ryan Ratclifff and Jerry Nickelsburg wrote.

It’s good news for politicians because it means that while the state still faces a very large budget deficit – some $10 billion over the next 19 months, according to the Legislature’s budget office – it’s not likely to become significantly worse. Schwarzenegger’s Department of Finance was waiting for the Anderson forecast so that it could make its final revenue forecasts next week and begin the final throes of writing a proposed 2008-09 budget that Schwarzenegger will unveil next month.

The UCLA forecast for California is similar to that for the nation as a whole – a slowdown but not a recession. The full and voluminous Anderson report is available here.

More teachers qualified

California has made significant gains in reducing the number of public school teachers who lack full credentials, the Santa Cruz-based Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning reports, but still faces severe challenges in building and maintaining the quality of its teaching corps.

The number of “underprepared” teachers has dropped from 42,000 to 15,000 in the last five years, the center says in its new report.

“With 95 percent of classrooms now staffed by qualified teachers, the opportunity arises to turn our attention toward strengthening teaching,” the center’s executive director, Margaret Gaston, said in a statement accompanying Monday’s release of the report. “But to do that, we need a teacher development system that builds capacity. In what is sure to be a year of complex challenges, made more difficult by a lack of resources, we urge policymakers to stay focused on teacher quality.”

The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning is supported by a wide array of California corporations and foundations. The full report is available here.