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Homes sit among the trees in the hills of Berkeley, Calif. on Saturday, October 11, 2025.<\/p>\n
Yalonda M. James\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Hundreds of thousands of people have left California for more affordable places in the last several years. More and more of them are the less prosperous residents of wealthy neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
Getting out of the Golden State can leave them much better off.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s according to a new report<\/a> from the California Policy Lab, a research institute based out of UC Berkeley and UCLA. Those researchers found that people leaving California have more student debt, more auto loans and lower credit scores than those who stay \u2014 but end up being much likelier to own a home within a few years of moving to another state.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThe affordability gap has really widened over the last decade,\u201d said Evan White, the executive director of the lab at UC Berkeley and a co-author of the report. \u201cThat\u2019s making it really difficult for people even making good money to get by.\u201d<\/p>\n To make these determinations, the report, one of the most detailed looks yet at California\u2019s ongoing outmigration<\/a>, relied on anonymized data from credit bureaus. That allowed the researchers to follow the same individual over time and see what became of their financial situation, explained Evan White, the executive director of the lab at UC Berkeley and a co-author of the report.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n What it revealed is that after leaving California, people land in more affordable places \u2014 and their financial position improves.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n For the last two decades, more people have left California for other states than have moved to the Golden State from other parts of the country. That trend reached a height during the pandemic, but has ebbed slightly in recent years. Historically, international migration<\/a> has kept California’s population afloat despite the net losses to other states. But declining entrances to California, from both international and domestic movers, has meant California\u2019s population growth has ground to a halt<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf trends continue, the implications for California\u2019s tax base and national political clout could be severe,\u201d the report said. \u201cFor example, after losing one congressional seat in 2021, California is on track to lose three to four seats<\/a> in Congress after the 2030 Census.\u201d<\/p>\n The report does not reveal the personal reasons why someone might have moved, White noted, but it is clear that people move to more affordable locations, often in neighboring states like Nevada and, in recent years, Idaho. In addition to finding that leavers are likely to be financially worse off than their neighbors, the researchers found that people who move to another state landed in a place where monthly housing costs are $672 lower than the neighborhood they left.<\/p>\n White said that the financial gap between people who choose to leave the state and their neighbors indicates that people have a difficult time attaining the quality of life they want in California, which the researchers called a \u201ckeeping up with the\u00a0Joneses\u201d effect.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Seven years after leaving California, movers were also 11 percentage points more likely to be a homeowner than those who stayed, after controlling for age, the report said.<\/p>\n Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California who also researches population trends, said that the\u00a0homeownership differential was one of the most striking findings in the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n Johnson, who was not involved in the California Policy Lab research, has also found that affordability is a main driver<\/a> of the exodus from California. The stark divergence in how much more likely leavers are to afford a home, he said, underscores just how central housing is to people\u2019s decisions. .\u00a0<\/p>\n Housing costs in California have always been high, White noted, in part due to the state\u2019s desirability. But the housing crisis is a problem \u201cdecades in the making, across multiple administrations and parties,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n What that means, both researchers said, is that California is increasingly becoming an option only for the well-heeled. Both said that recent state policies aimed at increasing housing production are a step in the right direction, but that the problem isn\u2019t solved yet.<\/p>\n