Despite allegations of a “massive exodus” from California over the past year, a new study released Thursday from a nonpartisan think tank found that exits from the most populous U.S. state by 2020 largely reflect historical patterns.
California Policy Lab, which works with state governments to provide information on key issues, said in a press release the findings of the report revealed that most of California’s residents took place within the state by 2020.
The group found that the most important change recorded was a decrease in the number of people moving to California.
However, the city of San Francisco has left a record number of people in the coronavirus pandemic.
From last March to the end of 2020, net exits from the city of Northern California increased by 649 percent compared to the same period in 2019, from 5,200 departures to 38,800, the Policy Lab reported.
“Although a massive exodus from California clearly did not occur in 2020, the pandemic did change historical patterns, for example, fewer people moved into the state to replace those who left,” said Natalie Holmes, a research fellow at the Policy Lab, said. and a graduate student from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California-Berkeley.
Holmes added: “At the provincial level, however, San Francisco is experiencing a unique and dramatic exodus that is causing a 50% or 100% increase in Bay Area immigration for some provinces in the Sierras.”
Since 2015, the share of movers leaving the state has increased from 16 percent to 18 percent.
Evan White, executive director of the Policy Lab at UC Berkeley, said that while the state has yet to see evidence that affluent residents are leaving the state in large numbers, exits from higher-income groups could negatively impact the state’s economy in the future.
“Unfortunately, because the state relies heavily on income taxes on the rich, the departure of even small numbers of rich people could negatively impact incomes if they are not replaced by new entrants,” White said in a statement.
The study is based on data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel, which contains information about adults with a credit history who has lived in California since 2004.
The dataset contains a person’s zip code and credit information, which is updated on a quarterly basis, according to Friday’s press release.
The Policy Lab defines a move as a change in the zip code from one quarter to the next, which means that there may be a backlog in the data if an address change is not reported immediately.