Gullixson: Something different: The state of 'us'

"The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained."

-#8212; Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002.

As any prognosticator will tell you, predicting the future is not difficult. Being right is the hard part.

When it comes to looking at what's ahead, we really have only ourselves and our past to analyze. And in that way, people are like stocks: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Nonetheless, it's all we've really got when it comes to looking at where we're going. So with that in mind, I present my own year-opening analysis -#8212; the State of Us.

This is not a State of the Union, which you will get on Tuesday (6 p.m. Pacific time) or a State of the State, which you got in a compact 17-minute we've-got-a-surplus-don't-blow-it message on Wednesday from the governor. Nor is it like the we're-OK-the-Central-Valley's-not State of the County address and economic forecast you heard Friday.

This is a state of us.

First, it should come as no surprise, but we are growing older, heavier -#8212; and more Latino.

Latinos now equal the number of whites in California -#8212; 39 percent -#8212; and sometime in the coming days, if not already, are projected to become the largest ethnic group in California. It's a landmark moment.

In Sonoma County, roughly one in four residents is Latino. But Latino families also are disproportionately struggling to make ends meet. More than 60 percent of Latino households in Sonoma County are surviving on $25,000 or less a year. For the county as a whole, less than 19 percent are.

Meanwhile, we also are growing more gray. We are ground zero of what is known as the "Silver Tsunami."

Today, one in seven Sonoma County residents is 65 or older. By 2030 -#8212; just 16 years from now -#8212; that share will grow to one in four people, a demographic balance that's expected to hold steady for at least three decades. The number of people 85 or older is expected to triple by 2060, from 11,183 in 2010 to 34,341 in 2060.

Meanwhile, we also are becoming more overweight. In Sonoma County, more than one in three fifth-, seventh- and eighth-graders is considered at high risk for body composition and body fat. In 1999, 74 percent of Sonoma County seventh-graders were considered in the "healthy fitness zone" for body composition. A decade and a half later, that was down to 58 percent.

Yes, we are growing in number as well -#8212; but slowly. Far more slowly than we were in the 1980s and 1990s and during the early part of last decade. Sonoma County grew just 0.8 percent from 2011 to 2012 to 491,829 residents. Still, that trend is expected to inch along, with Sonoma County's population projected to jump 24 percent to nearly 600,000 people by 2040.

Meanwhile, we also are becoming more mobile -#8212; at least with our technology.

Two out of three people in the United States are expected to have a smartphone or a tablet, or both, by 2015. That is remarkable, especially when you consider that the first iPhone didn't hit the market until the year before Barack Obama was elected into office.

Our kids are becoming more mobile as well. Eight out of 10 5-to-8-year-olds have access to mobile devices on a regular basis. That's up from half just two years ago. So when we said we needed to get kids to watch less TV, apparently we have succeeded.

The day is fast approaching when we will be doing most, if not all, of our reading, meeting and competing -#8212; both in the business environment and the video game one -#8212; on tablets and smartphones.

At the same time, we also are becoming more homeless -#8212; and more hungry. According to a study released last year, low-income Sonoma County residents -#8212; households with incomes of less than $50,000 -#8212; miss out on 47 million meals a year.

The Redwood Empire Food Bank feeds 78,000 county residents a month, but it's not enough. Thousands of us, including our children, go to bed hungry every night. Some of us go to sleep without a bed as well.

A countywide census showed the number of homeless people in the county jumped 25 percent from 2009 to 2011. At some point during the coming year, roughly 10,000 people will find themselves without a place to live.

According to the census, a third of those now on the streets are there primarily because of a job loss. More than half previously lived in a home that they or a partner rented or owned. Nearly 40 percent of homeless have children, and, of those, four out of five are regularly attending school.

The fact is most of those who are homeless are not chronically so -#8212; and are not unfamiliar. They just need a hand up and a place to stay for the night, if not a little longer.

Yes, there are positives. More of us are employed than two years ago. The county's jobless rate is now down close to pre-recession levels. More of us are out of trouble on our home mortgages, and more of us are saving money, which is good for our household finances but bad for our consumer-based economy. Furthermore, those of us who own homes are seeing values bounce back. Median home prices jumped 23 percent last year, the strongest year in the past seven.

What does all of this have to say about what is ahead for Sonoma County in the new year and beyond? I'm not sure. All I know is we'll never really know where we're going until we see where we've been -#8212; and we get a better understanding of who we are. And considering how many of us get left out of most of those state-of-something reports, we have a ways to go.

Paul Gullixson is editorial director for The Press Democrat. Email him at paul.gullixson@pressdemocrat.com.