California Dreaming: Why The Golden State Still Lures Newcomers

"Even as real estate prices rise to fearsome heights and freeways become impassable, even as wildfires consume some homes and rampaging mud swallows others, even as experts declare the state ungovernable and a major earthquake inevitable, the refugees from New York and Manila and Tehran, from Texas and Nepal and Washington, D.C., continue to come to California...the Golden State remains a powerful domestic magnet as well, with about 600,000 people from other states arriving here last year...

California's humming economy was the strongest draw; the unemployment rate in several big counties, including Orange, San Diego and Riverside, is significantly under the national rate...

What's truly puzzling is the 84,000 or so adults who said they were moving to California for a less expensive home. Maybe they're all from Manhattan, or maybe it is just further testament to the state's ability to induce derangement...

Various experts project that the population will rise from 37 million to 48 million by 2030. As a result, the state will require a lot more water, electricity, houses and space on the freeways. California has four of the 10 fastest-growing big cities in America, according to Census Bureau statistics released last week â€" more than any other state."