California or Bust - Or Not

California retains its hold on Americans’ imaginations, but that doesn’t mean they’ll pull up stakes and move there. Both sides of this equation become clear when one looks first at a recent Harris Poll and then at an analysis of 2000 Census data. In the poll, California ranked No. 1 when Americans were asked which state (other than their own) they’d most like to live in or near. But the study of Census data, by University of Michigan demographer William Frey, notes that California had a net loss between 1990 and 2000 in the number of migrants who were born in the U.S.