Prediction: Sunny Side Up

By KURT ANDERSEN

New calculations make California, Texas and Florida winners

The next millennium is not so far off: a child born this year will still be a child, just a teenager, in the year 2000. And judging by the U.S. Census Bureau's newest calculations, that turn-of-the-century teen-ager more likely than not will be a sun-drenched type who goes around chirping, "Fer shure, y'all."

Last week the Census Bureau released its highly educated guesses about the demographic shape of the country at the turn of the century and predicted that a solid majority of the 267,461,600 resident Americans on July 1, 2000 (up from about 234 million today), will be Southerners or Pacific Coasters. These "provisional projections" assume Americans will achieve a slightly higher birth rate, live two or three years longer and, most problematically, maintain their current patterns of interstate migration. Thus, say the Government researchers, California will pull farther out in front as the most populous state, with more than 30 million residents in the year 2000. The Census Bureau also believes that a denser Texas (20.7 million) and Florida (17.4 million) will knock New York, then shrunken to 15 million or so, down to fourth place in the state population rankings.

This demographic rejiggering, if it does occur, portends not merely more Americans with lush flower gardens and good suntans: the balance of political and economic power in the U.S. should continue tipping south and west, and state and local governments in the Sunbelt will have to scramble to keep up with millions of new constituents. It seems certain that the governments will be hard pressed by the new or expanded demographic bulges to provide new or expanded services, just as states that lose people will have difficulty with shrinking tax bases and reduced federal aid.

The comparatively underpopulated Rocky Mountain states are expected to fill up at the most spectacular rate, with the region's population almost doubling by 2000. Six of the seven fastest-growing states lie between the Plains and the Sierra Nevada. The state of Nevada, growing most rapidly of all, is expected to increase its population from about 800,000 to almost 2 million by the start of the 21st century.

Nine states, all east of the Mississippi River except South Dakota, look to be smaller in the year 2000: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York on the East Coast and, toward the industrial Great Lakes, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois.

Because seats in the House of Representatives are redistributed every decade to reflect population shifts, the political consequences should be significant. New York might lose eight or more of its House seats, and Pennsylvania and Ohio several apiece. Conversely, the Sunbelt's numerical clout on Capitol Hill will surely swell. California might be assigned an additional four seats in Congress, Texas seven more, and Florida's delegation could expand from 19 to 28.

Republicans may hope to gain the most, since many politically conservative states such as Idaho, Utah and Wyoming are growing fastest, while traditionally more liberal states (Massachusetts, New York) seem to have static or diminishing populations. On the other hand, the political tilt of some of the biggest boom states--California, Texas, Florida--could be leftward: the states' predominantly Democratic Hispanic populations are growing especially fast and it seems likely that in elections hence, a greater proportion of Hispanic Americans will vote. Hispanics, blacks and Asian Americans together will constitute a larger fraction of the country's population--16.9% by century's turn, up from today's 14.4%.

The skimpy voter turnouts of the past few years could improve. Older citizens tend to vote in greater numbers than the young, and the Census Bureau says the median age will rise from 31 to 36 by the end of the century. There will be many more very old Americans. For instance, Arizonans over 80 will increase their number almost fivefold in two decades, from 50,000 to 228,000. Nationally, the number of people 85 and older is likely to double, to 5.1 million. To accommodate this demographic shift, cities and states may adapt existing facilities to the new circumstances: Ohio, for instance, is predicted to have 624,000 fewer children and teen-agers at the end of the century than it does today. Instead of building new centers for the proliferating elderly, local governments there might simply retrofit old empty school buildings.

None of the transformations, of course, are inevitable. The Census Bureau's vision of the future depends on Americans moving from state to state for the rest of the century precisely as they did during the 1970s. In fact, such patterns are apt to be tempered, changed in intensity or direction. Extrapolating from the 1970 census, the Government predicted a 1980 U.S. population of 221 million; that turned out to be short of the actual number by 5 million people. Explains Gregory Spencer of the Census Bureau: "No one who leaves New York has to sign out. No one who goes to Florida has to check with us." The bureau uses figures for school enrollment, federal transfer payments and driver-license registrations, among other measures, in assembling its forecasts. The Census Bureau demographer who amassed the new calculations, Signe Wetrogan, carefully hedges her bets. "I would not think that the magnitude [of shifts] we are projecting is going to appear," she says.

Moreover, no demographer can really anticipate such pivotal phenomena as, say, an economic renaissance in Ohio or the decision of large numbers of migrants that Florida is too hot or humid or has finally become too crowded. Consider the Census Bureau's conclusion that Washington, D.C., will experience the most severe decline in the U.S., from a population today of 631,000 down to just 376,500 at century's end. No sooner had that radical drop been forecast than other number crunchers disagreed. "It's just not going to happen," says George Grier, a Washington demographer. How does he know? "No trend," Grier says, "lasts forever."

--By Kurt Andersen.

Reported by David J. Lynch/Washington

With reporting by David J. Lynch This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.