The Bay Area's growth rate of 12.5 percent was well below the 19.7 percent rate in the Central Valley, including Placer and El Dorado counties, near Sacramento. The Inland Empire, including San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties, was the state's fastest growing region at 30.2 percent. California's population grew 13.8 percent to 33.9 million over the past decade. But Los Angeles, while growing to 9.5 million, saw its share of the population shrink from 30 percent to 28 percent. Recession slows pace California grew at about half the rate it did during the 1980s, and the overall 4.1 million increase was just two-thirds of what occurred that decade.
Experts blame the recession for the slower pace of growth.
The new seat is likely to be in the Central Valley or the Inland Empire. The state grew in the past decade because so many babies were born here and because of foreign immigration, not because of people moving here from other states. For the first time since the 1970s, more folks left California for other states than arrived from them, said William Frey, senior fellow at the Milken Institute, a non-profit economic think tank in Los Angeles. Immigrants, particularly from Latin America, also tend to have higher birthrates than native-born Californians. Latino women bear an average of 3.3 children, compared with non-Hispanic whites, who have 1.6.