Fun Fact About LA County

There are a lot of people there.

One of the things that “debates” like the one we are seeing rage about fire management and the like about the fire in the Los Angeles area is the utter lack of scale and understanding context.

For example: the population of LA County is currently estimated to be 9,633,345 (2023 Census Bureau estimate). For basic comparative purposes, I would note, therefore, if LA County was its own state, it would be eleventh in population, just edging out New Jersey.

To put it another way: 39 states have populations smaller than LA County’s.

As such, massive disasters in such a situation are likely to affect a lot of people and also be quite costly.

It also means that when making comparisons to other places (or even other times), such facts need to be taken into account.

And just pointing out the number of people doesn’t tell us the population density.

LA County takes up 4,753 square miles, which is just slightly smaller than Connecticut at 5,543 square miles. Connecticut’s population is 3,675,069 (roughly a third of LA County).

The county’s population density of the county is 2,430/sq mi. Connecticut’s is 747/sq mi.

The state with the highest population density is New Jersey at 1,263/sq mi. The District of Columbia’s is 11,131/sq mi.

As a matter of basic social science, and of general policy and political analysis, understanding these basic facts is kind of important.

I would note that I am using the whole county as the unit of analysis but would note that some parts of the county are much more densely populated than others. As per the map at the top of the post, the further north you go in the county, the fewer people there are. But, also, the issue is not just the city of Los Angeles, as the fires in question are mainly not in LA proper (indeed, I don’t think any of the major ones are at the moment).

None of this has much of anything specific to do with what can or cannot be done about future fires (or that should have been done in advance of the current ones). But these are rather essential data needed to understand the context in which these events are taking place.

FILED UNDER: Climate Change, Environment, US Politics, , , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Kathy says:

    I would note that I am using the whole county as the unit of analysis but would note that some parts of the county are much more densely populated than others.

    You see the same in Mexico City, not counting the metropolitan area which is even bigger. If you drive out of the city to Cuernavaca, you go past a very sparsely populated area for several kilometers, before you run into the signs marking the city limits. You don’t see houses, buildings, or even many access roads to farms and fields. To all appearances, you’d think you left the city long ago.

  2. Michael Reynolds says:

    Here’s another fun fact: the GDP of the LA/LB metro is 1.3 trillion dollars. A bit more than the Netherlands. More than Saudi Arabia. Taxes are high, the drought is eternal, traffic is appalling, and things have a tendency to ignite, and yet people will pay five times as much for a house in LA as in, say, West Virginia. People will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to not be in West Virginia.

    Californians pay far more the the federal government than they ever get back, so when Californians ask for help from the USG they’re really asking for some of their own goddamn money back.

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  3. Stormy Dragon says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Similar trivia, the northeast conurbation (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, and a bunch of smaller outlying cities, which have basically grown together into one giant super-city), has an annual GDP of $5.229 Trillion and would be the world’s third largest economy if it were independent

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  4. Connor says:
  5. EddieInCA says:

    @Connor:

    Try harder…

    Analysis from the Rockefeller Institute of Government shows that, in 2022, California contributed $83 billion more in taxes than it received from the federal government. New York and New Jersey also paid more in taxes than they received. Both Texas and Florida received more than they contributed.

    From the article, as of 2022:

    IRS data shows just how much Los Angeles County stands out in federal revenue. IRS data looking at the 2021 tax year shows that residents of the county filed tax returns owing a cumulative $20 billion — more in L.A. itself than in all but four entire states.

    and

    The funding to which those Republicans are tying political strings can accurately be described as California’s money in the first place.

    and

    On Fox Business, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) insisted that funding would need to come “in conjunction with some reforms that California hasn’t been willing to make on the way they regulate their water and things of that nature.” The state, he said, had “wasted their taxpayer dollars on all kinds of crazy, woke agenda items that they’ve had and green energy stuff.”

    Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) told that same channel that “we will certainly help those thousands of homes and families who have been devastated, but we also expect you to change bad behavior.” Blue-state governors, he said, “need to change their tune, now.”

    This rhetoric is largely detached from reality. It is not the case, for example, that California prioritized “green energy stuff” at the expense of wildfire preparation. Besides, increasing green energy means decreasing fossil fuel consumption, which means (incrementally) addressing climate change, which experts suggest contributed to the ferocity of the fires. Nor were similar arguments made when Florida and Texas needed aid.

    Rhetoric about forcing California to change its policies in order to get federal aid is not only disingenuous; it presents the state as supplicant. In reality, California pays far more to the federal government than it receives in benefits — one of only a handful of states for which that is true.

    Connor, get off of Fox News. Be a better human, and not so much a piece of excrement.

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  6. Richard Gardner says:

    @Steven Taylor – hey we’re both UCI Grads, boy has the world changed since we graduated. I’ve been chatting with a friend from High School (likely the richest one of my class with stock options from Blizzard/Activision – but another friend is big in AI and Quantum Computing) and we’re both going, what about Altadena? So what about $3-10M Pacific Palisades homes. Oh, Hollywood stars lived there.

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  7. Tony W says:

    @Stormy Dragon: If the Northeast Conurbation you describe, and something I’ll call “Cascadia” (WA, OR, CA) ever became separate countries from the US, there wouldn’t be much left except for some oil reserves around the “Gulf of America”.

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  8. Connor says:

    @EddieInCA: The chart is per capita, the correct measure. And it has nothing to do with Fox news.

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  9. Rob1 says:

    @Steven Taylor

    But these are rather essential data needed to understand the context in which these events are taking place.

    Absolutely.

    Recent reporting stated that something like 150,000 people had been evacuated from their homes, a startling number that has led some to characterize the situation in “armageddon-like” terms. A troublingly large number to be sure.

    But this represents 15 thousandths of a percent (.015) of the area’s total population and speaks to the resilience built into the larger community despite the scope of devastation.

    And it serves as notice and illustration of one of our species most important traits for survival and sustainability: that of social community. Stark contrast to the anti social animus spewed by Tuberville and the like, calling for political conditions to be attached to any government assistance for the LA fire victims. What malevolent, self defeating rubbish! United we stand, etc.

    Another startling realization comes from viewing the photos of decimated Pacific Palisades. The dense communities of homes are completely leveled all the way to the ocean!
    Just the footprint of home foundations all the way to the beach! And presumably, includes houses that had stucco exteriors and tile roofs (from my recollection of visits there).

    This was a climate change turbocharged blast furnace that scrubbed the land of human activity. All up and down that coast are similar dense communities.

    And it’s not just beachside. I noticed that one of the fires appears to be headed inland in the direction of Palmdale and Landcaster. Again from my recollection, there’s not much vegetation out there to burn. Or at least there didn’t use to be.

    Humans have built out much of once was vast open space, creating large deposits of fuel for fire on the path of the Santa Ana winds.

    We have to get past this political tug-a-war over the reality of global warming. Leveraging political opportunism against the facts that factor into our survival, is a selfish “dead-ender” mechanism that we simply cannot afford to indulge.

  10. Daryl says: