Economy

San Diego County Population Grows, But Not As Fast

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published December 28, 2009 at 12:14 PM PST

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

San Diego County grew by more than 38,000 people last year, most of that growth due to new children born to existing residents. However, significantly fewer new babies were born in the region compared to the year before.

The growth of San Diego's population is mostly internal: the biggest increase comes from residents having more children, rather than from immigration.

Regional demographer, Ed Shafer, of the San Diego Association of Governments or SANDAG, says the long term trend of increasing births was interrupted last year.

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"They’ve been going up 200 to 500 a year," he says. "And then this last year they dropped by about a thousand. It’s hard to say that is trumpeting some sort of new trend. I think the drop in birth rates is because of the economy.”

Shafer points out birth rates fell to their lowest rates on record during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

46,000 new babies were born in San Diego county last year and 19,000 residents died.

Shafer says another trend that emerged last year was fewer people moving either in to or out of San Diego County from another state. The poor housing market and lack of jobs put a crimp on domestic migration. Three thousand more people left San Diego than arrived.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.