on assessing and collecting their own taxes themselves. (All utility property is assessed by the State Board of Equalization.)

Assuming competence and honesty in the assessment of property, how great are the interjurisdictional disparities among communities in Los Angeles County? The answer, as already indicated in Table 4, is that school tax rates among the representative cities selected for study vary from $2.6181 per $100 of assessed valuation in Beverly Hills to $6.1405 in Pico Rivera, the median rate among them being $5.3485 and the rate for the central city being $4.2516.

While these differences are substantial they are in some instances compounded when the municipal tax rates are added (along with those for the county and the flood control district, which are uniform throughout the SMSA) to make the general rate. The reason for this is that, chiefly because of revenue derived from the sales and use tax, 20 of the 76 cities in Los Angeles County found it unnecessary to levy any property tax at all during the current year and in a number of others the rate is close to zero. In 1965-1966 the median general rate among the 19 representative municipalities on which this inquiry is based was $8.6941 per $100 of assessed valuation. Beverly Hills needed only $6.4308; Commerce (which on July 5, 1967 announced "no city property tax" for the seventh consecutive year) had the next lowest rate, $7.0743; and Vernon's was only 19¢ higher. Meanwhile property owners in Los Angeles paid $9.1270 and those in Pomona and Claremont paid the highest rates of all, $10.1247 and $10.2263 respectively. (Levies by special districts serving only part of a city were, of course, in addition to these.)

Effective tax rates.--For purposes of comparing property tax rates in California with those in other states, three types of adjustment must be made. First, due allowance must be made for the fact that in this state assessable property includes a) real estate, or land, b) buildings or other improvements, c) personal property, including business inventories as of the first Monday in March, d) public utilities privately owned. Solvent credits, which is to say accounts receivable arising from the sale of goods or services minus deductible debts, are also taxable but at a different rate, namely one-tenth of one percent of their actual value.

Second, proper adjustment must be made for these ratios of assessed value to market value. Land, improvements and personal property are currently assessed at 23.5 percent of full value in Los Angeles County, but here and elsewhere local assessors are under instructions to shift to a 25 percent standard with all deliberate speed. Public utilities are assessed by the State Board of Equalization, but at a ratio of 50 percent of their true value.

Finally, California has a fairly liberal policy with regard to property tax exemption. What it does, in brief, is a) to grant certain limited immunities to veterans and b) to declare wholly exempt such properties of churches, colleges, orphanages and the like as are used wholly to religious, educational or philanthropic purposes. Under certain conditions works of art loaned for public exhibition are also tax exempt.

Elasticity of the Property Tax

Insistence on "no further increase in property taxes" has been a common slogan in election campaigns in the state of California ever since the end of World War II. Systematic analysis of the record indicates, however, that such warnings or pledges have not been taken very seriously. Taking the Mayor of Los Angeles and the members of its city council, for example, here are the facts in tabular form. What they sug

gest is that, in all probability, the property tax has not even yet reached the limit of its potential yield--this despite the fact that in the 1966 campaign the winning candidates for elective office, both state and local, proclaimed more loudly than ever the absolute necessity of "holding the line" where it then stood.

TABLE 8.--PROPERTY TAX ELASTICITY IN CITY OF LOS ANGELES, 1957-1958

Change

It is impossible to estimate the precise effect of these rates on the taxpayers of the City of Los Angeles because until as recently as 1963 the "percentage of full market value" at which the county assessor was free to compute assessed valuation enabled councilmen (and also county supervisors) to play a kind of numbers game in setting the tax rate. Throughout the county (and the state) efforts are now being made to equalize local assessments as nearly as possible at 25 percent of market value.

Socioeconomic Factors and Trends-12/

Population

Age.--In 1960 the median age for males in the Los Angeles-Long Beach SMSA (which then also included Orange County) was 30.0 years and for females 31.8 years. For Los Angeles County alone the corresponding medians were 30.5 and 32.4. The extremes among the communities for which statistics are available were, at the bottom, 14.5 years for males and 17.8 for females in Watts and, at the top, 46.0 years for males and 47.4 for females in Beverly Hills. For the year 1965 statistics are available only for Central Los Angeles (city), for Watts and for East Los Angeles (unincorporated territory). The Watts figures had changed to 13.8 years for males and 17.9 for females.

As for Central Los Angeles, heavily Negro, the 1960 census found the median ages for males to be 31.8 years and for females 32.3. By 1965 these figures had changed to 28.8 and 33.8 respectively, indicating a widening gap between the sexes. East Los Angeles, dominated by people of Mexican extraction, changed during these same five years from a 24.1 year median for males and 24.9 for females to medians of 21.8 and 23.6 years respectively.

For several other representative communities in the area, the range in median ages in 1960 was of this order:

Race.--In the year 1960 the races within what is now the Los Angeles-Long Beach SMSA included 5,453,866 whites and 584,905 others of whom the great bulk were Negroes. Central Los Angeles city had 5,542 whites, 15,970 Negroes, and 1,855 others; Watts 4,206 whites, 29,516 Negroes, and 279 others. At the other extreme, Beverly Hills had whites predominating at 30,057 compared with others numbering only 760. Pasadena, however, was definitely beginning to experience a Negro influx: 98,440 whites and 17,967 others.

No 1965 data are available other than for central Los Angeles city, Watts, and the unincorporated Mexican-American community known as East Los Angeles. The 1960 statistics for several representative communities within the area were as follows:

Regarding the three "problem areas" on which data are available for both 1960 and 1965, here is how their racial composition changed from 1960 to 1965:

Perhaps the most significant fact to be noted from these figures is that in all three areas both white and Negro populations have declined. What is particularly important, however, in the case of Central Los Angeles and Watts is that in both cases the ratio of whites to Negroes has also declined--from 34.7 whites to 26.6 per 100 Negroes in the one case and from 14.2 to 10.7 in the other. Both areas are clearly tending to become Negro ghettoes.

As for East Los Angeles, its total population has also declined but here, too, one finds the tendency toward ghettoism, though in this case for Mexican-Americans.

Between 1960 and 1965 the number of whites with Spanish surnames increased from 51,156 to 56,600. And of these, the number born in Mexico jumped from 10,828 to 14,220.

Occupations.--Within the limits of this report it is possible to present only a few statistics pertaining to differences in occupational patterns, particularly within the Los Angeles-Long Beach area. Thanks, however, to the availability of the "Community Economic Profile" compiled by the Office of Economic Opportunity, several significant comparisons can be made between conditions in this SMSA and those in other parts of the country.

To begin with, 49.0 percent of the people in the labor force in Los Angeles County were engaged in white collar jobs in 1960, a record matched by only 3 percent of all the counties in the United States. Another basic fact is that the proportion of males in the labor force fell in the decade 1950-60 from 78.2 to 65.8 percent while for the country as a whole it fell from 78.7 percent to 67.2. As of 1964, the latest year for which data are available, less than 1 percent of the labor force was engaged in either the industrial category of agriculture--forestry--fisheries or that of mining; 6 percent were engaged in construction; nearly 36 percent in manufacturing; 6 percent in transportation, utility and sanitary services; 8 percent in wholesale trade; 18 percent in retail trade; 7 percent in finance; and 20 percent in services.

More specifically, of the 97 major classifications within the standard industrial classification system, the largest number of workers in the county were--and probably still are--employed in the production of transportation equipment, the next largest number in eating and drinking establishments, and the third largest in the manufacture of electrical machinery and equipment.

Housing: Quality and Ownership

Adequacy. --Housing within the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area varies greatly according to the statistics available for the local communities selected for study. In 1960 (Orange County was then included in the SMSA) conditions were about as indicated in Table 9. (Gross rent consists of the amount paid to the landlord plus the utility and heating costs paid by the occupants of the dwelling.)

Differences in median gross rents are easily discernible. Hand in hand, as a rule go the number of people per room in a housing unit: the higher the rent a family pays, the more space each individual usually enjoys. There are, of course, exceptions. In Lakewood, for example, where the 1960 median gross rent of $113.00 was considerably higher than the average, a person apparently would have less space. However, rooms in that newly-built area may be somewhat larger than in older sections of the county. Most of the structures in Lakewood were less than ten years old at the time of the survey. Its median family income of $7,600 was also higher than the SMSA median of $7,073. In Watts, where median gross rent was noticeably low, $63.00, crowding was somewhat above average and residences were largely of older vintage.

Comparable data for 1965 were available only for Central Los Angeles, Watts, and East Los Angeles. Here are some key figures: