Under the direction of Adele Hayutin, Senior Research Scholar and Director of our Global Aging Program, the Stanford Center on Longevity has launched an analysis of demographic change in California, with a particular focus on the intersection of aging and ethnicity.

While California is one of the youngest states overall, many of its cities and counties are rapidly aging. The inland areas are growing faster than coastal regions and ethnic diversity is increasing. Latinos will be the largest ethnic group and the share of immigrants will continue to grow. As communities both age and diversify, the needs of their citizens will change. Understanding the underlying demographic changes is critical for understanding the future of the state and the changing needs of his citizens.

The California State Library has a stated goal of adopting innovative methods for meeting the knowledge and information needs of a diverse population, and it has funded SCL to prepare a comparative analysis that will illustrate how demographic characteristics differ across the state’s 183 library jurisdictions. The major outputs of this project include the following:

1) regional demographic profiles for each library jurisdiction, including data tables and graphs that highlight key indicators;

2) a state demographic overview including visual displays of key statewide trends; and

3) a comparative demographic analysis, including ranking tables and comparative charts to highlight similarities and differences across California’s cities and counties.

A key goal of the project is to synthesize available data, including recently released data from the 2010 Census and the American Community Survey, into a set of comparative profiles that will facilitate an understanding of how key demographic indicators vary across the state.

This project is supported in whole by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.

Read the report