By 2060<\/a>, the state’s median age is projected to be over 45. In 1970, it was nearly 28.<\/p>\n The aging of California is\u00a0made more difficult by the steady loss of working-age people, particularly in middle-aged families. Since 2000,\u00a0more than 4 million net domestic migrants\u00a0have moved to other parts of the nation from California, a\u00a0pace that has accelerated in recent years.<\/p>\n From 1980\u20132020, the share of 25-to-35-year-olds in California who owned their homes declined to just 15.5%. Dragana Gordic \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n Even immigrants seem to have stopped coming, and not only because of President Donald Trump’s policies<\/a>.<\/p>\n LA’s foreign-born population actually declined<\/a>\u00a0in the 2010s, as immigrants looked elsewhere for work. In the deindustrializing economy that is California outside of the high-tech sector, immigrants are propelling a poverty rate that is the highest of any state.\u00a0<\/p>\n California has stopped building schools and factories. Instead, we build hospitals to accommodate the old.<\/p>\n Rapid aging is also a natural byproduct of\u00a0extremely high house prices. These\u00a0lead young people, particularly those with children, to leave the state.<\/p>\n The gap between California homeownership rates and those in the nation at large is now at a record high, notes Berkeley’s Terner Center. Between 1980 and 2020, the share of 25-to-35-year-olds in California who owned their homes declined from 39.4% to just 15.5%.<\/p>\n So it is no surprise that people in their 30s and early 40s, according to\u00a0IRS numbers<\/a>, are\u00a0precisely the group<\/a>\u00a0deserting the state\u00a0most rapidly, including in Silicon Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps most revealing, California now ranks last in per capita terms of attracting new residents<\/a>, a stunning reversal from its traditional role as a beacon to the rest of the country and the world.<\/p>\n We could also encourage the building of senior housing, as was recently proposed by LA Mayor Karen Bass. David Buchan for CA Post<\/p>\n The precipitous decline in state’s total fertility rate is therefore no surprise. Long above the national average, California’s fertility rate is now the nation’s\u00a010th lowest, far below that in key competitor states like Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n In LA County and\u00a0Orange County, birth rates have plunged over 15%\u00a0in the past decade. In LA County, the nation’s most populous, the\u00a0under-25 population shrank by nearly\u00a0three-quarters of a million. That’s three-quarters of a million people who would have joined the prime-age workforce over the next 25 years.<\/p>\n In contrast, Texas, Utah, Idaho and Arizona have enjoyed double digit growth in this same cohort over\u00a0 the past two decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n Given this worrisome trend we might consider some serious policy changes. Regulations make it\u00a0 extraordinarily difficult to build the single-family homes<\/a> preferred by\u00a0the vast majority\u00a0of Californians. Dense, expensive urban areas are not ideal places to raise a family, except for the very affluent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rather than\u00a0urban “infill” housing, we need more lower-density developments. Less-dense regions also tend to produce more children than larger, dense areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n The impact on California schools is obvious. California’s schools have seen enrollment declines higher than in the rest of nation. Enrollment fell by 325,000 students (5%) \u00a0between 2019 and 2023. By 2031, this loss could widen to one million. In LAUSD, the state’s largest district, total enrollment has decreased by 27% over the last decade, and 44% over 20 years.<\/p>\n Reforms in housing policy are necessary to remain competitive with the rest of the country. But those reforms would require changes in California’s land use patterns, energy policy, taxes, and regulations . \u00a0<\/p>\n Reform of tax policies, for example, could allow seniors to sell their houses without crushing capital gains liabilities, something now being proposed in Washington. We could also encourage the building of senior housing, as was recently proposed by LA Mayor Karen Bass<\/a>, which could open opportunities for young people to buy the houses they leave.<\/p>\n Restoring hope to the younger generation should be an imperative, even for the Boomers. If not, young people will find their desperate offspring roused to generational war against what The Atlantic<\/a> describes as\u00a0 a corrupt\u00a0 gerontocracy that has\u00a0 “amassed disproportionate wealth and power.”\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n We have already seen this script play out in\u00a0 New York, where underpaid and often overeducated\u00a0 young people opt\u00a0for radical leftism, embracing redistribution of wealth. In reality, that means taking money not just from billionaires but from any Boomer with a decent income and some property. This will\u00a0supposedly pay for free buses and daycare; rent control; and government-owned groceries. The primary victims? People\u00a0like small landlords \u2014 largely first and second-generation immigrants\u00a0\u2014 and bodega owners, the vast majority Latino.\u00a0<\/p>\n Socialism is not the answer to the aging crisis in California. But if we fail to address the housing crisis, and start creating better jobs, we may experience the dystopian future\u00a0staring at us.<\/p>\n Joel Kotkin is the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute of the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters<\/p>\n California Post News: Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, TikTok<\/a>, X<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, WhatsApp<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a>![\"From](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/california_post_772\/c997d0e233aca5a4ecfe4d4d052dbec2.jpeg\"\/)
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