California Census Data: Are Baby Boomers Screwed?
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Who's going to teach them how to program their DVR?
The children?
Apparently not.
According to a professor at USC, there many not be enough young'uns around to lend a hand, as Los Angeles is the "epicenter of California's shrinking population" of children.
Dowell Myers, who teaches demography at USC, recently analyzed census data from 2000 and 2010, and discovered that LA County lost 21 percent of its kids ages 5 to 9 in the past decade.
That's nearly three times that of the State of California, which lost 8.1 percent of its young children.
"We are ground zero of the 'missing children' of California," Myers has said. "We are heading into uncharted territory."
Myers says part of the reason for the decline is that tough economic conditions have driven families with young kids away in hopes of finding more affordable housing and better job prospects. As of March, California had the third worst job market in the nation.
The result of this exodus, claims Myers, is that there will be "fewer workers to support the retiring Baby Boomers."
Other interesting tidbits Myers unearthed include:
-- The number of unmarried couples sharing a household in California jumped 32 percent from 2000 to 2010.
-- The number of married couples with children in LA County declined 14 percent during the past decade. Riverside was the only county in California where that number grew, up 22 percent.
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