Cal-i-for-nia, Here We...Leave?

"California recorded a domestic net loss of about 29,000 people last year -- the first negative flow of residents since the mid-1990s. The biggest recent loss was in 1994, when the sputtering state economy helped California lose about 350,000 residents to the other 49 states.

The most common destinations for the newest crop of departing Californians were Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Washington and Oregon.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the high cost of housing was the primary reason people fled the nation's most populous state, which has more than 37 million residents."

"In previous decades, waves of departing Californians were primarily white. But the newest exodus includes unprecedented numbers of Hispanics, primarily Mexican-Americans.

The analysis by Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California, found that about 320,000 more Hispanics left California than arrived from other states between 2000 and 2005.

Asians were the only ethnic group to have more people move into California than leave, according to Johnson."