Wonder how many are missing in the Sacramento area? (:
Dan Walters: Where did a million people go?
By Dan Walters - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PST Tuesday, January 2, 2007
California has misplaced a million people -- or not, depending on which group of demographers one believes.
Just before Christmas, the state's demographic unit released new population estimates for the 2005-06 fiscal year that ended June 30, declaring that California's population had risen by 462,000 souls during the year, to 37,444,000.
A day later, the U.S. Census Bureau released its own population data for the same period, showing that California had expanded by just 303,402 persons during the same period and stood at 36,457,549 on June 30, or nearly a million fewer.
That's a lot of bodies, and they are important because both state and federal governments use population calculations, not only for the state as a whole but for cities and counties, to divvy up various forms of aid. So billions of dollars are at stake.
Both of the numbers were undoubtedly incorrect because estimating populations, or even counting them during the decennial census, are, by their nature, imprecise. The techniques of both counting and estimating are the best that the demographers can devise, but everyone knows that they may overcount or undercount those who for one reason or another fly under the radar, not unlike the discrepancies in political polling.
That said, why is there such a huge difference between state and federal estimates of the total state population? Mostly, it has to do with methodological differentials on how many people have moved out of California since the last census in 2000.
Mary Heim, who heads the state Department of Finance's demographic unit, says, "The most prominent reason for the discrepancy, 1,152,1000 people, is the estimation of domestic migration ... Since the 2000 census, the Census Bureau estimates a net domestic migration loss of 951,000 persons (more Californians who moved out of state than those who moved here from other states)."
