San Francisco is holding onto its title as the country's most childless major city, and in fact the numbers haven't budged in a decade.

Every couple of years the national media seizes on the story, with each update from the Census Bureau, of the American cities that have the fewest families with children under 18, and San Francisco has been coming out on top for over two decades now. And, the percentage of children in SF's population, while holding fairly steady for the last ten years, actually came down a couple points from the early to mid-aughts, when it hovered around 15%, and 1990, when it was around 16%.

The latest number is 13.4%, the same share of residents under 18 as back in 2014. The number dipped as low as 13% during the pandemic, when the 2020 Census came out, but it's come back up to 13.4%. (For the 2022 update, the Chronicle broke things down by neighborhood, finding that Seacliff and the Bayview had the highest kids per capita, while, predictably, the Castro and SoMa had the lowest.)

Seattle is the next-most childless city, according to the latest census estimates, per the Chronicle, with 14% children under 18.

Compare that to Los Angeles (18.5%), New York (19.6%), and Houston (24%), all far larger cities where more people still seem to be managing to raise kids.

In SF, of course, affordable housing is an issue for the middle and working classes, and being the boom-and-bust city that it has been since its earliest days, it has taken on the character of a transient haven — a place where younger people come to make career moves, and then move on.

The preponderence of rental housing that is often shared by wage-earning roommates is also a factor in affordability, as the New York Times noted back in 2017. This keeps prices high for larger apartments that are more appropriate for families, pricing those families out to the suburbs.

"When we imagine having kids, we think of somewhere else," said software engineer Slin Lee, speaking to the Times at the time and sharing a studio apartment near the Castro with partner Daisy Yeung and one Scottish terrier named Olive. “It’s starting to feel like a no-kids type of city."

That story came at the height of SF's last boom time, as an "urban renaissance" was sweeping through the nation's cities, per the Times — and while SF's percentage of kids was estimated at 13% that year, New York's 21%, so the percentage is falling there as well.

And, the Times noted, "In many areas of [San Francisco], pet grooming shops seem more common than schools."

That remains the case, and unfortunately, as is happening in Oakland and other communities as well, the dwindling number of children has spelled financial disaster for SF schools, which depend on headcount for the amount of state money they receive each year.

Back in 1970, there were 90,000 kids in SF's public school system. Now, it's 50,046 as of the 2024-25 school year.

The Chronicle notes that in the last ten years, Oakland's percentage of kids under 18 fell from 21% to 18%, a fairly steep decline. Similarly, San Jose's percentage dropped from 23% to 19%.

In California, only Bakersfield and Fresno have child populations over 25%. And elsewhere in the country, the trend has similar in major cities, with only Washington DC and Orlando seeing modest, 1% upticks in the last 10 years, per the Chronicle.

At least in SF, the writing has been on the wall in terms of the youth population going back to the 2010 Census and beyond.

"It’s a statement on our age that in order to make it in our more advanced, best and most-skilled industries you really have to sacrifice. And the sacrifice may be your family," said Richard Florida, an urban demographics expert and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, speaking to the Times in 2017.

"If you get to the age that you’re going to have kids in San Francisco and you haven’t made your million — or more — you probably begin to think you have to leave," Florida said.

Previously: SF Still the Most Childless City in U.S., New Map Breaks Down Childlessness by Neighborhood [2022]

Photo by Brett Wharton

The Burning Man Census for 2023 is now out, just as Burners are arriving on the playa for another late-August week of revelry in the Black Rock Desert. And many of the demographic trends seen in the 2022 census are continuing.

It should be noted that in what was, by all accounts, one of the most challenging and unpleasant years at Burning Man, in the very muddy August of 2023, a large portion of the people there were Burning Man virgins. According to the newly released Burning Man Census data from last year, the proportion of virgins to the playa jumped above 40% for the first time since 2013, to 44%. And this might do something to explain why overall ticket-sale numbers were down this year — a lot of those virgins were probably like "Hell no, I'm never doing that again."

You may recall that the annual burning of the man had to be delayed from Saturday to Monday due to rain and mud, and many Burners, and their vehicles, were stuck in the mud that whole last weekend, unable to leave until Monday or later.

In other demographic news, in 2023, Burning Man became majority female for the first time in its history — a marked change from a decade ago, when the festival was closer to 60% male.

Much as we noted last year, the trend in the Burner population is to be more queer, homo, or non-binary than in years past. A whopping 68.5% of Burners said they were straight/heterosexual back in 2013, but that percentage went down to 57.7% in 2023. The year prior, it was 60.0%.

17.4% of attendees called themselves bisexual or pansexual, and another 10.4% said they were bicurious or heteroflexible in 2023. And those identifying as gay or lesbian rose to 8.7% — up from 7.2% a decade earlier.

The festival also continues to be predominantly white, with small percentages of people of color attending in all categories.

And, no surprise here: Most Burners identify as Democrats, however the next largest percentage identifies as independent or politically unaffiliated. The proportion of those identifying as Democrats went up significantly since 2013, from 43% to nearly 65% in 2023, likely due to the horrors of the Donald Trump era. The percentage of those identifying as Republican was 4.1%, down from 6.7% a decade earlier.

Also similarly to last year, the percentage of Burners making high six-figure incomes continues to rise, while the percentage of middle-class Burners making $99K or less continues to fall. Burning Man is an expensive undertaking, and for those who only get a couple weeks of paid vacation a year, it may be becoming less of a priority.

The overall Burner population fell last year compared to 2022, and it may fall slightly again this year. This is following trends with music-festival attendance nationwide, which appears to be on the wane, but it also may reflect other issues including the economy.

As of last week, Burning Man tickets were not sold out, and it was the first time in 14 years that this had happened.

Burning Man organizers have conducted a census every year going back to 2002, however they have been using a similar methodology since 2013. This involves both a random sampling of questionnaires completed on the playa, and an online survey that's taken after the event. They say the result is an informed estimate of the demographics at each year's event, but not a precise accounting.

Previously: Burning Man Has Gotten Richer, Queerer, Slightly Less White

Photo: Kalaman

Census data reveals an unexpected new trend in San Francisco's so-called "exodus" — a widening educational divide.

One of the biggest demographic shifts in the city since the pandemic began has been the mass departure of residents 25+ who haven't attended college, per the Chronicle. Even as the city's population has dropped overall, this sub-demographic is leaving at significantly higher rates.

In the city, since the beginning of the pandemic, the total number of people aged 25 or older with a high school degree or less dropped by 14%, according to the data. Specifically, it plunged from approximately 165,000 in 2019, to around 144,000 in 2021, then further to 142,000 in 2022 (note that census data wasn’t available in 2020 because of the pandemic).

While SF’s population dropped overall in the same time frame — from 2019, the total population was around 875,000, and in 2022, it was only 834,000, representing about a 5% decrease — the non-college-educated proportion dropped far more than the rest of the population.

In pre-pandemic times, SF was reportedly seeing an increase in its non-college-educated population — as the Chronicle wrote, between 2018 and 2019, it rose by 5,500 people (or 3.5%) — so this represents a significant shift in San Francisco's population dynamics.

In fact, the change serves as a counterpoint to the narrative that those moving away SF in the exodus were solely overeducated remote tech workers.

The Chronicle attributes the decline of the subpopulation to the pandemic-related shutdowns and the rising cost of living, which prompted both remote white-collar workers and service workers to leave the city for greener, cheaper pastures. Service workers especially have been feeling the squeeze since before COVID, with their numbers declining 32% since 2019 (compared to a 7% nationwide decline over the same time), as the Chronicle reported.

San Francisco’s post-pandemic recovery has obviously been slow, in fact, among the slowest of urban areas in the country, as we’ve previously reported. As of August 13, 2023, total spending by SF consumers is down by 3.9%, compared to January 2020, according to Track the Recovery.

Image via Unsplash/Bia Frenkel.

Newly released demographic data from the 2020 Census — which is, albeit, three pandemic years out of date already — shows that Asians now represent a plurality of Bay Area residents, overtaking white people for the first time as the largest racial group in the region.

As the Mercury News reports, the new demographic analysis looks at only six of the Bay Area's typically bundled nine counties — the data reflects San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, and Marin counties, and leaves out most of the North Bay. But it shows a number of notable shifts, a big one being the quickly growing Asian population.

Back in 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau found that the six-county Bay Area was home to 40.3% white people, and 25.5% Asians. Fast-forward to 2020, and the numbers changed pretty significantly, with the two racial groups fairly close in number and Asians now outnumbering whites by two-tenths of a percent — 32.9% white, 33.1% Asian.

As in other parts of the country, the data also shows the population aging, with a 38% jump in the number of people over the age of 65 — and a simultaneous decrease in the birth rate, as shown in a 12% drop in the last decade in the number of children under five years old.

That declining number of kids overall is being felt in school districts across the Bay Area which are experiencing declining enrollment, and a consequent decline in state funding, which has led to battles over the closing of schools.

And, in a shift that should come as no surprise to Millennials, the percent of renter-occupied homes grew from 44.8% in 2010 to 47.1% in 2020, with the number of residents who own their homes declining about 2% over that decade.

Fewer people were able to afford to live alone in 2020 than in 2010, and household sizes generally got bigger. The number of households with five or more people rose 1% over the last decade, from 11% to 12%, and the number of single-person households dropped from 27% to 24%.

As the Mercury News notes, that latter trend may have reversed during the three years of the pandemic, as more people likely moved out of crowded housing situations, but we don't yet have data on that.

Significant shifts occurred in many peoples' lives during the pandemic, especially between mid-2020 and mid-2021, and we know that San Francisco lost a significant chunk of its population in that first year as people worked remotely and fled to more suburban and rural locales. Between July 2021 and July 2022 we know that trend was reversing, however the city did not see any huge influx of newcomers in those 12 months — and actually lost around 2,000 more people.

Previously: Census: Santa Cruz Grew Quickly, SF Shrank Less Quickly In Second Year of Pandemic; Sun Belt Cities Saw Most Growth

All signs point to new and returning people moving in to San Francisco over the last nine months, but during the first year of the pandemic, as the U.S. Census Bureau now confirms, around 55,000 people left San Francisco County.

San Francisco was second only to New York City in terms of the percentage of its population that appears to have fled for other, perhaps less urban locales in 2020/2021. According to new data from the Census Bureau reported today by the Chronicle, which focused on the "natural decrease" that occurred in county populations nationwide that was likely driven by COVID deaths, New York County, New York lost 13,000 people to death, but saw 16,000 births during the July 2020 to July 2021 period — however out-migration far exceeded in-migration of people to the city, with a net loss of 114,000 people, or 6.6% of its total population. San Francisco saw out-migration of 6.3% during that same time — and the city also saw more births than deaths, with 8,000 births recorded compared to 7,000 deaths. (And we know that SF had a very low mortality rate from COVID compared to the rest of the country, with only around 600 pandemic deaths as of last summer.)

San Mateo County also saw a nationally significant decline in population, with a loss of 3.5% of its population between July 2020 and July 2021 — the 5th biggest drop in the country, and coincidentally the same percentage decline seen in Kings County, New York, the home of Brooklyn.

The largest total net decline in population during the pandemic year was in Los Angeles County, which lost nearly 160,000 people, but as a percentage of the population this was still very small and not even in the top 20 for percent decline.

Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, explains to the Chronicle that San Francisco and San Mateo Counties "have some of the highest percentages of remote work eligible occupations in the country and some of the highest housing costs in the nation." So it stands to reason that when remote work became the norm during the pandemic, lots of workers took the opportunity to find cheaper rents further afield. And earlier looks at out-migration data, some based on U.S. Postal Service change-of-address data, showed that many San Francisco and Bay Area residents stayed in-state, simply moving toward Sacramento or other areas with lower home prices and lower rents.

Also, based on Postal Service data, the migration trend for SF looks to have shifted as of July 2021, with net out-migration slowing down significantly. And lately we're seeing more stories about moves ticking up into SF, particularly by Gen Z-ers just out of college, getting ready to start their careers.

A new study by the Brookings Institution has found that not very many tech jobs have left Silicon Valley in the last two years, despite media reports to the contrary. While there may be a lot more hybrid and remote roles these days, San Francisco and San Jose’s share of the country’s total tech startups dipped just 0.8% and 0.7% respectively. And both SF and Silicon Valley saw a net gain of tech jobs of 0.3% — lower than the previous five years, but a gain nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the new census data shows which parts of the country had declining populations based on "natural decrease" between 2020 and 2021, i.e. they saw far more deaths than births. That included all counties in Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, however many of these counties still saw net increases do to people moving into them from elsewhere in the country.

"The patterns we’ve observed in domestic migration shifted in 2021,” said Dr. Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for estimates and projections in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, in a statement. “Even though over time we’ve seen a higher number of counties with natural decrease and net international migration continuing to decline, in the past year, the contribution of domestic migration counteracted these trends so there were actually more counties growing than losing population.”  

Those trends showed more moves during the pandemic from large, populous counties to small- and medium-sized counties, in general.

The full national trend map can be seen below.

An analyst recently discerned a potentially key flaw in the numbers that Facebook is using to draw advertisers to its platform, and it could be a big one. Facebook claims that it reaches 41 million people in the US in the key 18-to-24-year-old demographic, but that actually may not be possible if US Census Bureau numbers are to be trusted — according to the Census, there are only 31 million people in that age range living in this country. While Census numbers are always estimated at some level and come with a margin of error, the margin here may be too large to be credible in the case of Facebook's claims, as Reuters reports, and the over-estimate extends to the next demo as well, 25- to 34-year-olds.

The observation comes via a senior analyst at Pivotal Research Group, Brian Wieser, who is one of few stock analysts who maintains a "Sell" rating for Facebook stock.

Facebook says that it has 236 million monthly active users in the U.S. and Canada, as Consumerist notes, meaning that, according to the company, two thirds of all Americans and Canadians are active on Facebook every month. It's unclear whether the 41 million figure is supposed to be monthly, weekly, or daily, and Facebook gets cagey in a statement to Reuters trying to justify the discrepancy with the Census. They say their ad reach numbers "are designed to estimate how many people in a given area are eligible to see an ad a business might run. They are not designed to match population or census estimates."

Another explanation for the discrepancy could relate to migrants and undocumented people, although the Census tries to count them too — as they do on this population clock.

Consumerists points to the proliferation of spambots and people who keep multiple profiles as a more likely source of the discrepancy — i.e. the ad reach number is likely inflated by fake or duplicate accounts.

Wieser said in his note on the stock that this may not necessarily deter advertisers when it comes to buying space on Facebook, but the discovery of such a discrepancy "will help traditional TV sellers justify existing budget shares and could restrain Facebook’s growth in video ad sales on the margins."

Then there's the ongoing question of what percent of teenagers are actually, truly active on Facebook versus other social media platforms — given that most of their grandparents are now on Facebook. At least as of two years ago, according to a Pew Research poll, 71 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 said they used Facebook regularly, but only 41 percent said it was their most visited site.

Previously: Most Teens Actually Still Using Facebook

46 percent of Millennials want out of the Bay Area "in the next few years" according to a poll released today by the business-backed Bay Area Council, and although that may sound like good news to the old grayhairs who curse these phone-addicted youths, it's a serious problem according to the council's President and CEO, Jim Wundermann. In fact, he's using the results to make a plea for housing to keep the Millennials here.

"Losing our youth is a very bad economic and social strategy," Wunderman says. "Until we get serious about building the housing we need we’re going to continue seeing our region drained of the young and diverse talent that has helped make."

Millennials, a cohort measured here as 18 to 39 year-olds, cited the high cost of living (55 percent) as the number-one problem, followed by traffic (41 percent), and housing (39 percent). Homelessness and poverty/crime was also a reason they cited (30 percent) for dissatisfaction here.

"We saw a lot of young recent college grads or people who recently completed graduate programs come to the Bay Area and we added 650,000 jobs in just a few years and now those same people are entering their 30s and they're starting to think long-term about things like starting a family or building out their household,” Wunderman said. Another report, from last year, showed 80 percent of local Millennials had given up on owning a home here, so that's out.

The Bay Area Council poll was conducted online by Oakland-based public opinion research firm EMC Research between January 24 and February 1 with a 3.1 percent margin of error, surveying 1,000 registered voters across the nine-county Bay Area. And it's an uptick from the past poll, which last year showed 34 percent of Bay Area residents saying they'd leave soon. Now that overall number is 40 percent, with Millennials leading the charge. This is going to be heartbreaking for some parents: supposedly 31.5 percent of Bay Area Millennials live at home, according to another poll.

Related: LinkedIn Map Shows Where People Flee To When They Leave The Bay Area

San Francisco, as a city, is peerless. And yet a City of San Francisco study sought a basis of comparison in 16 "peer cities" to see how we stacked up in our would-be "field," with an eye toward a variety of areas from demographics to transportation to health and safety statistics.

Notably, what we have here is not one of your standard, frankly arbitrary, "Top Ten Cities for Millennials to Fall in Love" lists, concocted with dubious animus and data. By contrast, the "Citywide Benchmarking Report" is a product of the City Services Auditor, created in 2003 by a voter-approved city charter amendment. The City Services Auditor's duties are described here, although in legalese. The point is, basically, that it's their job to provide general department performance reviews and the Benchmarking Report.

Let's dive into the findings, many of which have already been highlighted by SocketSite. The full report is available here for your perusal, which relies on publicly available data and survey data. There are ups — San Francisco's heavy use of parks and libraries, for instance — and there are downs — San Franciscans had the highest rates of chlamydia and HIV among our peers.

Our peer cities:

Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Denver, CO
Long Beach, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Miami, FL
Minneapolis, MN
Oakland, CA
Philadelphia, PA
Portland, OR
Sacramento, CA
San Diego, CA
San Jose, CA
Seattle, WA
Washington, DC

Demographics

• In 2014, only 13 percent of San Francisco's residents were under 18, the lowest percentage among peers (20 percent peer average).


• San Francisco has a significantly lower black population than most peer cities. As of 2014, only 5.7 percent of residents identified as black or African American.


• In 2014, San Francisco had the highest average household income among peers, $112,459. San Francisco does, however, have the highest cost of living among peers.


• 63.4% of occupied housing units in San Francisco were renter-occupied in 2014, ranking third highest among peers.

Livability

• San Francisco spent $213 per resident on recreation and parks compared to an average of $151 across peers.


• San Francisco libraries logged 8 visits per resident, second highest behind Seattle with 9.4.


• San Francisco residents used 42 gallons of water per day, on average, 14.8 gallons less than its closest peer in California.


• San Francisco's Pavement Condition Index was 68 in 2015, second highest among its peers.

Public Safety

• San Francisco had the fourth highest property crime rate among peers. In 2015, 4,726 property crimes were committed per 100,000 daytime population, compared to the peer average of 3,058.


• San Francisco had 190 sworn officers per 100,000 daytime population. This number is virtually equivalent to the peer average for this measure.


• Compared to peer cities, San Francisco had a lower than average 911 call volume. In fiscal year 2014-15, there were 0.57 911 calls per daytime population compared to the 0.85 peer average.


• San Francisco County's average daily jail population per 100,000 resident population was 144, lower than seven of eight surveyed peers.

Transportation

• In 2014, 34 percent of workers in San Francisco commuted to work using public transportation compared to a peer average of 17 percent.


• There were 3.6 traffic fatalities per 100,000 residents in San Francisco in 2014, lower than the peer average of 5.0.


• On average in 2014, a San Franciscan boarded a public transit vehicle 272 times. This number is much higher than other peer transit systems (65 times).


• The average speed of San Francisco’s motorbuses was 8.1 miles per hour while in service -- theslowest speed among peers.


• Total operating expense per passenger trip was $3.05 dollars for San Francisco Muni, below the peer average of $4.05.

Finance

• San Francisco's General Obligation Bond Rating from Moody's is Aa1—the second highest possible rating—and higher than the median rating of Aa2.


• San Francisco's employee pension plan funded ratio was higher than peers (86 percent compared to 72 percent).


• San Francisco spent less than budgeted by 4.3 percent in fiscal year (FY) 2014-15 compared to the peer average of 5.0 percent.


• San Francisco earned 3.9 percent more revenue than budgeted in FY 2014-15, higher than the 2.5 percent peer average.

Safety Net

• The number of San Franciscans in poverty was 105,244, a rate of 12.4 percent, slightly higher than the peer average poverty rate of 11.9 percent.


• San Francisco's average monthly CalFresh enrollment was 52,302 and on average 6 percent of residents per month received benefits compared to 8 percent in peer jurisdictions.


• San Francisco’s count of homeless individuals was 795 per 100,000 population (compared to 479 in peer jurisdictions).


• San Francisco had an average monthly general assistance caseload of 5,826 and on average provided $369 per month to cash grant recipients.

Population Health Highlights

• Sixteen percent of San Francisco's population was food insecure, meaning they lacked access to enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle, compared to a 13 percent peer average.


• San Francisco's HIV Prevalence (2,004 cases per 100,000 population) was nearly four times greater than the second highest ranked county.


• San Francisco County had 794 mental health providers per 100,000 population, ranking first among peers and higher than the peer average of 390 providers.


• San Francisco had the second smallest percentage of uninsured children (5.2 percent compared to peer average of 6.6 percent) and the smallest percentage of uninsured adults (13.9 percent compared to 18.7 percent) among this peer group.

The US Census has released a bunch of cool charts comparing data about 18- to 34-year-old San Franciscans in 1980, 1990, 2000, and now (2013). What's revealed are some fascinating figures about how likely young SF folk are to be married before the age of 35 — in 1980, 63% had never been married; in 2013 that figure became 78%. We're also a better educated city than we were then, with 57% of 18- to 34-year-olds holding a bachelor's degree or higher (that figure was just 32% in 1980, and the national average right now is 22%), and not surprisingly given how expensive it it is to live here, people in this age bracket are a lot more likely to be employed than they were 35 years ago.

Also, SF was and remains way ahead of California and the rest of the country in terms of using public transit, or bicycles, to get to work.

Here are some more charts and graphs comparing SF in that period to California and the country as a whole.

[US Census Social Explorer via SFGate]

New data for 2013 from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (the mini-sample census they do every year to gather detailed pictures in between censuses) shows that San Francisco households, and individual earners, have all seen their incomes rise since the end of the Great Recession — if we're still calling it that.

Median household income in San Francisco was up to $79,624 in 2013 according to the survey. That's a 2.1 percent raise across the board, with men working full time earning a median of $68,615 and women working full time earning a median of $55,784.

The survey also does some fascinating tracking of state-to-state migration flows. A total of 485,500 moved into California between 2012 and 2013 from other states, with 31,000 of them coming from New York, 30,000 of them coming from Nevada, and 20,000 of them coming from Oregon.

Also, they just released some national-level data on same-sex couples. The Census, having only started tracking data on married and unmarried same-sex couples in 2004, now shows 727,000 co-habitating same-sex couples in the U.S., up from 639,000 in 2012 — a bump of 14 percent that's probably attributable more to greater recognition and data collection than to increased coupling overall. Of those, 252,000 same-sex couples now call themselves married.

Of course, there's depressing news in here too: The percentage of people living below the poverty line in San Francisco has essentially not changed since 2010. And the people receiving Food Stamp/SNAP benefits has risen to 6.3 percent, up from 4.5 percent in 2010.

Whether you're just a casual fan of the gay hedonist character of the Castro, or a vehement homo-separatist, this news is likely to cause some exclamation marks to get thrown around on Facebook feeds today: A new study out of the University of British Columbia finds definitively that the Castro, like other traditionally lesbian and gay enclaves around the country, is becoming less gay.

Though all of the figures he cites are not available online (he'd prefer you buy his book), sociologist Amin Ghaziani compared U.S. Census data from 2000 and 2010 pertaining to same-sex couples in the "gayborhoods" of the Castro, Chicago's Boystown, New York's Greenwich Village (which hasn't really been gay since the 80s), Atlanta's Midtown, and others and found that the gay-couple population had dropped across all these place by 8 percent, while the lesbian population had dropped by 13 percent, as UBC News reports.

This is hardly news to anyone in real estate, or anyone who lives in these places, and it's been a popular refrain about gay people that they come in to sometimes downtrodden areas, gentrify them, and raise property values significantly. Then everyone else wants to move in, and things change.

Ghaziani points to the mainstreaming of gay people, and the increased number of gay couples raising children who might desire to be in neighborhoods that have good schools. His most interesting finding may be that there are multiple "unexpected clusters" of same-sex parents around desirable schools in traditionally straight neighborhoods, and that you can now find same-sex households in a record 93 percent of U.S. counties.

Just to play devil's advocate: Ghaziani's study, like many others pertaining to the gay demographic in the U.S., is limited by its data source. Since the U.S. Census still doesn't ask the gay question, sociologist and demographers are left to intuit the locations of gay people by identifying same-sex households, basically couples. Single gay, lesbian, and bisexual people have still not been counted in a national census — though they were counted recently in the first large-scale federal survey ever to ask the question, conducted by the Census Bureau for the Centers for Disease Control, using a sample of 33,500 adults across the country. So, one could argue that while couples may be moving out of traditional gay neighborhoods, plenty of gay singles may be moving in to replace them.

But, as most neighborhood residents will tell you, there are more strollers than ever in the Castro being pushed by opposite-sex parents, typically more briskly as they pass the sex-toy shops.

Below, the video that goes with Ghaziani's study, in promotion of the published book.

[UBC News]
[HuffPo]

Marin County will no longer be the bastion of wealthy white people that it is today in about 50 years, according to new projections by the California Department of Finance. It's a trend across California as a whole, where the populations of Hispanic and Asian residents are increasing, and it's happening slower in Marin. But it is happening. And white people are expected to represent a demographic that's 50% smaller in the county by 2060.

White folk currently represent 72% of Marin's population, and that number is expected to drop to 50% over the next 50 years, with the Asian and Hispanic numbers growing over that period.

Statewide, the Hispanic population is expected to equal that of whites, at around 39%, by the middle of this year, and will surpass whites by early 2014.

See the full projected breakdown here.

[Marin IJ]

Sleepy, richy rich Belvedere, that little island made of gold up in Marin, next to Tiburon (where Tony Bennett has a mansion), has been noted by the FBI as the safest city in California for the third year running. For cities of 2,000 people or more (Belvedere has a population of 2,050) Belvedere had the lowest violent crime rate in 2010: zero. Way back in 2007 they reported a single assault. But as the 27-year-old police officer Chris Medina tells the Marin Independent Journal, he does occasionally have a job to do. "The truth is, things do happen," he says, a little defensively.

What happens exactly, besides the recent case they noted in a which a woman called to claim that her father had been screwed over by contractor over at $3,500 custom window? There were apparently a whopping 25 property crimes in 2010, including (gasp) a couple of burglaries.

[Marin IJ]

Some new figures released by the Census Bureau yesterday—in advance of the full 2010 Census, due out by December of this year—suggest that the under-18 populations of states like New York, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have shrunk significantly over the last decade, while in California and six other states, black, Asian and Hispanic children now constitute a majority of the under-18 population, with white kids under 18 in the minority for the first time. The change in demographics is attributed both to migration and immigration into western states like California, Texas, and Arizona, and higher birthrates in non-white families in these states.

Paraphrasing demographers, the NYT suggests that "changes in the voting-age population, coupled with disparities in where people are aging faster, may portend a divide between an older, whiter electorate and a younger total population that is more Hispanic, black and Asian and has a different political agenda."