OUR POPULATION CONTINUES TO GROW SLOWLY
Why Is This Important?
A region’s people are the key to its prosperity.The population generates ideas, fuels the economy, and shapes the quality of life in the region. Migration from around the country and around the world joined with natural population increases to drive continued growth of Solano County’s population.With this growing population comes new resources and ingenuity, which fosters economic growth and regional prosperity.
How Are We Doing?
Solano County’s population continues its slow growth. From 2009 to 2010, Solano County’s population increased 0.6 percent (2,710 people), up from the 0.1 percent from 2008 to 2009. Population growth in the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area and the state each plodded forward at 0.9 percent growth in 2010. Since 2000, Solano County’s population has grown by 8 percent, adding 32,350 residents, while the rest of the Bay Area and the state have grown by 10 percent and 14 percent, respectively. After occupying the top spot in 2000 and 2001, Solano County’s population growth has lagged that of the rest of the Bay Area and the state since 2005.
More people are moving to Solano County than are leaving. For the first time since 2004, foreign in-migration outpaced domestic out-migration resulting in a positive net migration. Net migration includes all legal foreign immigrants, residents who left California to live abroad, and domestic migration, the balance of people moving to and from the region from within the United States.
In-migration in addition to natural change in population (births and deaths), explains the recent population growth.While in-migration ticked up slightly, domestic out-migration decreased by 65 percent from 2009 to 2010. Domestic out-migration consisted of 1,364 people leaving the county between 2009 and 2010, roughly 2,400 fewer than between 2008 and 2009.To put these figures in perspective, foreign in-migration accounted for 0.4 percent and domestic out-migration accounted for 0.3 percent of the county’s total population in 2010.