Report Predicts 60 Million in State by 2040 : Growth: Wilson Administration says immigration and high Latino and Asian birthrates will double the population.

SACRAMENTO —  If current trends continue, California’s population will double to more than 60 million in the next half-century, the Wilson Administration said Tuesday.

In the state’s first comprehensive population forecast based on the 1990 federal census, officials project that California will add an average of 667,000 people--almost as many as live in San Francisco--every year between 1990 and 2040.

The report, prepared by Wilson’s Finance Department, suggests that Anglos will lose their status as a majority of the state population by 2002. No ethnic group will constitute a majority until 2040, when a Latino majority will emerge, according to projections.

The report could add fuel to the debate over the impact of immigration in California because it attributes much of the anticipated population explosion to newcomers from other countries and the high birthrates of Latinos and Asians.

The governor intends to use the numbers to argue for his proposed budget when he addresses county supervisors today in Sacramento, an aide said. Wilson’s spending plan envisions a half-cent reduction in the sales tax and calls for dramatic cuts in health, welfare and local government services.

“Tremendous population growth of this nature causes an overload on our ability to provide services for those people,” said Dan Schnur, Wilson’s chief spokesman. “You can’t tax your way out of this kind of a situation because the level of population, the level of caseloads, are going to continue to grow.”

The report projects that the state’s population of 31.3 million will rise to 63.3 million by 2040.

By then, it says, Los Angeles County will be home to 16.2 million people, with about 70% of them Latino. Anglos, who today account for about 40% of the county’s population, will represent only about one of eight people in the county in 2040, the report said.

The population in the surrounding counties also will soar, the state said, projecting that Riverside and San Bernardino counties eventually will be home to about 5 million people each. Orange County’s population is projected to be 3.7 million in 2040.

All of this, of course, assumes that current trends continue for 50 years. The projections do not account for the possibility that people will stop moving to California, or that current residents will leave, if the population growth degrades the quality of life in the state.

“The purpose of the projections is not to be a fortuneteller, but to say that given current trends, this is where we’re headed,” said Mary Heim, a Finance Department demographer and co-author of the study.

Peter Morrison, a demographer at the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica think tank, said population projections for a half-century from now can be useful as a point of reference for future revisions or for drawing broad conclusions.

“You can take this as an indication that there are going to be a lot more people piling up in California than some people might have thought,” he said.

More significant than the 50-year projection, Morrison said, is the department’s conclusion that the fertility rate in the state will nudge upward from 2.4 children per woman in 1990 to 2.6 in 2040.

“That implies that California has an extraordinary future ahead, in the sense that it has a disproportionate responsibility for turning children into productive adults on behalf of the nation,” he said.