San Francisco Study Confirms Increasing Inequality, Family Exodus

Two years ago, voters approved Proposition I, mandating the creation of San Francisco’s first ever economic plan. At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Ted Egan, a private economic consultant hired by the city, presented the first stage of the project, an analysis of the current state of San Francisco’s economy.

Not surprisingly, the survey focused on the changing demographics of San Francisco. As a “gateway city” for Asian and Latin-American immigrants, San Francisco now has more residents born outside the United States, 281,000 or 39 percent of the city’s population, than in California. Eighty percent of San Francisco’s foreign-born population came from Asia or Latin America.

However, as San Francisco received an influx of immigrants, the overall population of the city has declined by 30,000 as families have left San Francisco to move to Bay Area suburbs or other destinations in the United States. The only age group that experienced net population growth during the 1990s was young adults between the ages of 20 and 34.

The economic landscape has changed with the evolving demographics of San Francisco. Over the last fifteen years, sectors that have traditionally dominated San Francisco, including financial services, trade, and utilities, have given way to a boom in internet-related industries. With this boom has come a rise in overall wages of thirty percent, easily outpacing the national average of eighteen percent in that period.

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