County Contextual Factors

This section contains county demographics and other general information about the place and people surrounding California's K-12 public districts and schools. While there may not be direct connection between these factors and what is happening in schools, this information can provide context about the environment in which districts are making decisions. The goal of this section is to provide information about the counties, but more research is needed to determine the effect each factor may or may not have on the workings of districts.

Last Updated - October 2024

Key Questions

CORE QUESTION: What is the demographic context for each county?

ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS:

Are there any patterns or trends within general context factors?
Are there any patterns or trends between general context factors and county investments in Environmental and Climate Action?
How might the general county context contribute to the decision making process within school districts for environmental and climate action?

Read About Our Methodology Here

GENERAL COUNTY DEMOGRAPHICS AND INFORMATION

California is organized into fifty-eight counties that are responsible for administering state-required programs and also handling local programs. Counties are political and administrative subdivisions of the state, created by the California Constitution and state law, and they act as the bridge between state government and local communities.

California’s counties are politically, geographically, and demographically diverse, providing varied contexts within which the education system is operating.

Population Size and Geography

Population size and local classifications, such as urban, suburban, rural, and town, vary among counties and within any given county.

The graph above and visualization to the right illustrate these extreme differences. The visualization to the right shows the population as color, with larger populations in darker blue, and the geographic size as the size of the bubble, with larger counties represented by larger bubbles.

The graph above shows the population on the y-axis and the geographic size in square miles. The locale classification is shown as the color. As shown by the graph, there are many counties that are classified as rural with varying geographic sizes.

There are also multiple urban counties, with Los Angeles County sitting as an outlier with over double the population of the next most populated county.

Additionally, while San Bernardino County has a fairly large population, its geographic size far exceeds any other county.

The map below shows that within a county, there may be varying locale classifications as well.

Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Political Context

In addition to the diversity in geographic and population sizes, the counties in California include a range of demographic, socioeconomic, and political differences that may influence the likelihood of environmental and climate action (or how it may or may not be publicized), the strategies implemented, and/or the types of initiatives.

The maps below dive into some of the information from the 2020 census and 2024 presidential election.

The map to the right shows the percentage of the population in each county who voted for the Democratic Party candidate (Kamala Harris) in the 2024 presidential election based on data from the California Secretary of State Statement of Vote.

Counties that had around 50% of the vote for the Democratic Party are shown as white to indicate a neutral or swing county. Counties with less than 50% of the vote for the Democratic Party are shown as varying shades of red to indicate Republican-leaning counties.

From the map, we can see that the more Democratic-leaning counties are generally along the coastal regions with a handful of counties, such as Yolo, Sacramento, Nevada, Alpine, and Mono, in more central regions. The more Republican-leaning counties tend to be in the Central Valley and northeastern parts of California.

The map to the right shows the percentage of the population in each county who speak languages other than English at home based on the 2020 census data.

While the average for the state is around 32% of the population, this is not evenly distributed from county to county, with some counties like Plumas, Tuolumne, and Trinity having only about 7% of their population speaking a language other than English at home compared to Imperial at around 75%.

Note that the census data is missing information for Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Nevada, San Benito, Shasta, Tehama, and Yuba Counties.

The map to the right shows the percentage of the population in each county who identify as non-white, Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPoC) based on the 2020 census data.

Similar to the above map, there is a range of diversity with Plumas, Nevada, and Sierra having around 16% BIPoC population and San Joaquin, Los Angeles, Santa Clara, Alameda, and Imperial having 65–75% BIPoC population.

The map to the right shows the percentage of the population in each county who have received a bachelor’s degree or higher based on the 2020 census data.

Education level has slightly less variation among counties than the other census data, with the smallest percentage of bachelor’s degrees at 12% in Lassen County and the highest percentage at 62% in Marin County. Most of the counties (32 out of 58) have 20–40% of the population with bachelor’s degrees or higher.

The map to the right shows the median annual income for households based on the 2020 census data.

The median income varies widely from county to county, with the lowest median income at $47,317 in Trinity County and the highest median income at $150,839 in Santa Clara County.

While there is a large range in income from county to county, the cost of living also varies. However, the difference between median wage and cost of living is not consistent, as demonstrated by the graph below.

The visualization above shows the annual living wage for two adults and two children based on MIT’s Living Wage Calculator (blue bar) compared to the median annual income for households from the 2020 census (orange bar). Counties can be compared using the filter to the right of the visualization.

This visualization shows the range in differences between income and wage needed to survive in that county. For example, some counties, such as Alpine and Santa Clara, have a much higher median income than living wage, implying that a larger portion of families in those counties likely have some discretionary income. However, this is not the case for all counties in the state. In fact, many counties, like Butte and Los Angeles, have median incomes much closer to the living wage, which may indicate that fewer families have discretionary income. Additionally, there are some counties, such as Humboldt and Trinity, where the median income is lower than the living wage, which suggests that a larger portion of the population in that county is living at or below the poverty line.

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