Older adults now outnumber children in 11 states
July 7-13, 2025
By : Tim Henderson
The ratio of people over 65 to those younger than 18 grew in every state.
Montana, Oregon and Pennsylvania have joined the ranks of states where older people outnumber children, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released in June.
The ratio of people older than 65 to children younger than 18 grew in every state, according to a Stateline analysis of the estimates, which measure age changes in mid-2024 compared with earlier years.
Other states where older people already outnumbered children in 2023: Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and West Virginia. That grew from just four in 2020: Florida, Maine, Vermont and West Virginia.
The trend bodes poorly for the future number of young adults who can help care for older relatives, according to a report published last year by the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
“America’s health and aging care system is unprepared to support its large and growing older adult population,” the report concluded. It said health care likely will become scarcer and more unequal if the nation’s older population grows to 73 million as projected by 2030, from the roughly 61.3 million in the latest 2024 estimates.
The new census estimates show Maine and Vermont have the highest ratios: about 1.3 older people for every child, followed by New Hampshire (1.2), Florida and West Virgina (each about 1.1).
New England’s labor force has been slow to recover since the pandemic, partly because of an aging population, according to a report published in January by the New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Florida has many of the counties with the highest ratios of older people to children, the census estimates show.
Among larger counties with 100,000 people or more, older adults outnumber children the most — by 8 to 1 — in Florida’s Sumter County, home to most of The Villages with its fast-growing retirement communities.
The ratio is 3 to 1 in Florida’s Charlotte and Sarasota counties, as well as North Carolina’s Brunswick County and Massachusetts’ Barnstable County, where Cape Cod is located.
The ratio is 2 to 1 in New Mexico’s Santa Fe County, Arizona’s Mohave and Yavapai counties, and in five Florida counties.
The nation’s median age reached a new historical high at 39.1, up from 38.9 in 2023, the census also found. The median age was below 30 until 1980 and below 20 until 1870.
Maine’s population in 2024 was the oldest of any state, with a median age of 44.8; Utah’s was the youngest at 32.4 as of 2024.
Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.
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