By Bobbi Bowman
"Massachusetts . . . faces a huge demographics shift to a much older population. At the same time, the rules of retirement that shaped our expectations of the golden years are in a state of transition."
Source: The Graying of Massachusetts Report
The graying of Massachusetts symbolizes the future of the rest of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the Midwest from Ohio to Kansas.
Such a major aging of a society has never happened before. There are few touchstones to guide us into this new age.
Journalists need to quickly understand how to explain to their readers the impact of an aging population on their pocketbooks, their Social Security, their taxes and their shopping choices.
In the next 20 years, 20 percent of the folks in Massachusetts will be 65 or older. Massachusetts, along with the U.S., will experience the most profound age shift in its history. Massachusetts is ahead of that curve because its population is already older than the U.S. as a whole.
USA TODAY reported in May that Massachusetts is aging faster than Florida. Neighboring Maine now has the oldest median age in the country at 41 years. That means that half the 1.3 million folks in Maine are younger and half are older than 41.
Florida has the largest percentage of folks 65 and older --- 16.6 percent. The national average---12.1 percent. Massachusetts stands at 12.9 percent. Connecticut, 13.3. Rhode Island, 31.6.
Why is Massachusetts graying so rapidly? Two major reasons. The young, the educated and the middle class are leaving. Baby boomers are aging.
The Bay State has lost nearly 290,000 folks to other states since 2000. That’s on top of the 257,000 it lost between 1990-2000. Since 2000, every state sweeping from the Atlantic seaboard to the plains of the Midwest has lost population to other states except for three --- New Hampshire, Wisconsin and South Dakota.
In Massachusetts, the Bay State, a combination of the arrival of about 200,000 foreign immigrants and the difference between people dying and babies being born allowed Massachusetts to grow by about 88,000 folks since 2000. That translates to a paltry 1.4 percent growth rate. The U.S. growth rate since 2000 is 6.4 percent. Most states in the South and West have double-digit growth rates.
Americans have been migrating from the North to the South and the West for the past 30 years. That trend will accelerate in 2011 when the oldest Baby Boomers turn 65 and continue until 2030 when the youngest boomers turn 65. That means a faster emptying of New England and Midwestern cities and towns as retirees move to Phoenix, Scottsdale or to Orlando and the Gulf Coast.
The long-term implications of an aging population include opportunities and challenges.
Opportunities: More seniors mean a more experienced work force. One-third of the adults in Massachusetts have a college degree ---- the highest in the nation.
The more education you have the more money you make. Massachusetts enjoys a median family income of $71,000 a year, the fourth highest in the U.S.
More retirees can mean more volunteers for local schools, churches and civic organizations.
The challenges: the impact on taxes, the impact on health costs and the impact on attracting new businesses.
Taxes: Many higher income retired couples move to new homes on golf courses, on the seashore, or in the mountains in the South and the West.
That leaves small towns in New England, upstate New York and Ohio with an overabundance of widowed older women who retired from blue-collar jobs. These are folks who will pay less in taxes at a time when they need more services.
Who makes up that tax difference? Who pays for those increased services? The middle class that remains. Faced with fewer tax dollars and therefore shrinking budgets, elected officials in towns and cities are forced to chose between funding programs for the elderly and funding programs for kids.
The elderly vote. In some cities and towns older voters are literally voting against their grandchildren. In upstate New York, small boroughs have rejected school budgets.
Health costs: Who takes mama and daddy to the doctor? The older you get the more often you need to see the doctor. Either you can go to the doctor or the doctor can come to you. Who pays for programs that allow doctors to make house calls?
When my mother could no longer walk, we found a great program funded by the Washington, D.C. government that paid doctors to make house calls. It was a Godsend. The doctor came every six to eight weeks and in between a visiting nurse came.
My Aunt Marion lived in Prince George’s County adjacent to Washington. Prince George’s has no such program so every time Aunt Marion got sick, she went to the hospital. Hospital care is very expensive.
Attracting New Business. When businesses look for new locations, they look at age of the workforce and their education level. Certainly an aging population attracts businesses such as nursing homes, retirement communities, health services specializing in geriatric care. But city, county and state economic development officials know that these businesses rely largely on folks making blue-collar wages. Have you looked at the pay for a home health aide recently?
The economic development folks court the high tech firms and their ancillary high-income companies. The young go to prestigious New England schools for their education then leave for the jobs in the South and the West.
There are other stories: What’s happening to the funeral home business? What’s happening to the cemetery business? Are locally owned funeral homes and cemeteries disappearing?
Why are cemeteries now selling what I call “condomiums" instead of burial plots? How are grocery stores changing to serve an aging population? What about drug stores?
How do you get doctors to work in rural communities with plummeting populations? There are great stories that chronicle communities--- and a nation--- in transition.
Last word: There are now more Latinos living in Massachusetts than there are black people and Poles.
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