Demographics
The estimated 2005 population of San Francisco is 739,426. With nearly 16,000 people per square mile, San Francisco is the second most densely populated major American city. San Francisco is the traditional focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area and forms part of the greater San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area (CSA) whose population is over 7 million: the fifth largest in the United States as of the 2000 census.
San Francisco is a minority-majority city as non-Hispanic Whites make up less than 44% of the population. Asian Americans, principally Chinese, comprise nearly 31% of the population. Hispanics of any race make up just over 14% of the population. At less than 8% of the population, San Francisco has a lower concentration of African Americans than the United States as a whole. Few of San Francisco's residents have lived there their whole lives. Only 35% of its residents were born in California; 39% were born outside the United States.
San Francisco has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area. Gay men outnumber lesbians; it has been estimated that one in five male city residents over the age of 15 is gay.
The San Francisco median household income, at $57,496 in 2005, is the fifth-highest for any large city in the nation. Following a national trend, an out-migration of middle class families is contributing to widening income disparity and has left the city with a lower proportion of children, 14.5%, than any other large city in the United States. The city's poverty rate, at 7.8%, is lower than the national average and among the lowest for cities ranked by the U.S. Census Department.
Homelessness has been a chronic and controversial problem for San Francisco since the early 1980s. The city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major city in the United States. The rates of violent and property crime, reported for 2003 as 742 and 4943 incidents per 100,000 residents respectively, are higher than the national average. Among the 50 largest U.S. cities by population, San Francisco ranks 32nd and 38th in each of those categories.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
