The Central Valley is a dynamic region in the heart of California, between the Pacific coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains. The adjacent San Francisco Bay Area region has seen a major employment and population boom over the past several decades, bringing in new residents from around country and world. Without enough housing, the resulting increases in housing costs, congestion, and cost of living have increased migration out of the Bay Area, including to the Central Valley.

This is a research project about regionalism and regional interaction. The project seeks to understand impacts of out-migration from the Bay Area on Central Valley communities.

The research focuses on impacts in three areas:

1. Migration and Local Demographic Change:
   1. Who migrates from the Bay Area to the Central Valley?
   2. Where do they settle?
   3. Has this migration changed the income distribution of receiving communities?
2. Commuting and Supercommuting:
   1. What is the degree of supercommuting in Central Valley communities?
   2. Has supercommuting to the Bay Area increased in communities receiving more migrants from the Bay Area?
3. Local Government Finance:
   1. Are government revenues and expenditures changing in Central Valley communities receiving Bay Area migrants?
   2. Are changes in local income distributions changing local spending priorities?

COVID-19. The regional factors under study were in place before COVID-19 and will continue long afterwards. The Covid-19 pandemic continues to affect the Central Valley, including migration, commuting, and government budgets. To address this ongoing reality, the project is surveying local government officials about the effect of COVID-19 on the financial health of local governments in the Central Valley and surrounding regions. Click here to learn more about this survey.

The research focuses on the Central Valley and Bay Area regions and the areas that surround them. The map shows the core Bay Area counties in Blue and the Central Valley counties where economic and labor market linkages with the Bay Area are deepening in Red. These areas of the Central Valley are home to a growing number of households relocating from the Bay Area, as well as super-commuters traveling daily to Bay Area job centers.

The counties in Purple are adjacent to these Central Valley counties and current exhibit fewer commute and migration linkages to the Bay Area counties. The counties in Light Blue represent other regions (North Bay, Monterey / Santa Cruz) where many commuters to the Bay Area reside.