section_path: Demographics
section_name: Demographics
paragraph_text: Demographics
  
  According to the 2020 census, there were 18,644,680 people living in the Greater Los Angeles Area. The racial makeup of the area was 29.4% White (23.0% Non-Hispanic European and 6.4% Non-Hispanic Middle Eastern), 13.8% Asian (Non-Hispanic), 0.2% Pacific Islander (Non-Hispanic), 6.1% African American (Non-Hispanic), 0.2% Native American (Non-Hispanic), 0.5% from other races (Non-Hispanic), and 3.3% from two or more races (Non-Hispanic). 46.3% of the population were Hispanic of any race, a super-majority of which was of Mexican origin. 29.4% of the population (5.5 million) was foreign born; most immigrants came from Latin America and Asia.
  
  The explosive growth of the region in the 20th century can be attributed to its favorable Mediterranean climate, the availability of land and many booming industries such as oil, automobile and rubber, motion pictures, intermodal, logistics, and aerospace which in turn attracted millions of people from all over the United States and world. Citrus production was important to the region's development in the earlier part of the 20th century.
  
  While the New York metropolitan area is presently the most populous metropolitan area in the United States, it has been predicted in the past that Greater Los Angeles will eventually surpass Greater New York in population. Whether this will happen is yet to be seen, but past predictions on this event have been off the mark. A 1966 article in Time predicted Greater Los Angeles would surpass New York by 1975, and that by 1990, would reach close to the 19 million mark. But the article's flawed definition of Greater Los Angeles included San Diego, which is actually its own metropolitan area. A 1989 article in The New York Times predicted Greater Los Angeles would surpass Greater New York by 2010, but the article predicted the population would be 18.3 million in that year, a number Greater New York already surpassed in 2007 by half a million people. By 2009, the New York metropolitan area had a population of 22.2 million compared to the Greater Los Angeles Area's 18.7 million, about a 3.56 million persons difference. Percentage growth, however, has been higher in Greater Los Angeles over the past few decades than in Greater New York.