III.

Population

San Francisco grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, increasing in population from 57,000 in 1860 to 417,000 in 1910. Although the population leveled off during the 1930s, rapid growth resumed in the following decade, fed by the huge demand for labor by war industries during World War II. By 1950 the population had reached 775,000. After 1950 the city's population slowly declined as the surrounding suburbs grew.

In 2000 the population of San Francisco was 776,733. In 2005, the city’s population was estimated at 739,426.

Some 4.2 million people lived in the three-county San Francisco metropolitan area, and 7 million lived in the Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area defined by the Census Bureau as centered on San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.

Throughout most of San Francisco's history, the city’s population was largely white. Among the residents were large numbers of European immigrants and their children. In the late 19th century the largest groups in the city were Irish, German, and British. In the early 20th century Italian and Scandinavian groups also became prominent. The population remained more than 90 percent white until World War II, when significant numbers of African Americans moved to the Bay Area to take jobs in shipbuilding and other wartime industries.

The city has long been home to immigrants from Asia and people of Hispanic descent. Some of the ancestors of these residents moved to California in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when it was a Spanish or Mexican province. Others arrived during the Gold Rush of 1849 or in the early 20th century. With changes in federal immigration law in the 1960s, immigration from Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands began to increase, and many newcomers from those regions settled in San Francisco. Other recent immigrants have come from the Middle East and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, producing significant Arab and Russian communities within the city. By the 1990s San Francisco's population was both racially and ethnically diverse.

According to the 2000 census, whites were 49.7 percent of the people; Asians, 30.8 percent; blacks, 7.8 percent; Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, 0.5 percent; Native Americans, 0.4 percent; and people of mixed heritage or not reporting race, 10.8 percent. Hispanics, who may be of any race, made up 14.1 percent of the population.

From its beginnings, San Francisco has been a heavily Roman Catholic city. Immigration from Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries brought many Catholics and a large Jewish community; subsequent immigration has not greatly changed those patterns. Smaller religious groups include various Protestant denominations (including many that conduct services in an Asian language or in Spanish), as well as Buddhists, Muslims, and members of Orthodox churches.