GRAY SCALE: Reflecting the US, Aurora population grows older

The United States grew older, faster, last decade, and Aurora aged along with it.

The nationwide share of residents 65 or older grew by more than a third from 2010 to 2020 and at the fastest rate of any decade in 130 years, while the share of children declined, according to new figures from the most recent census.

The declining percentage of children under age 5 was particularly noteworthy in the figures from the 2020 head count released in May. Combined, the trends mean the median age in the U.S. jumped from 37.2 to 38.8 over the decade. Over the same time period, Aurora’s median age climbed from about 33 years to 34.8 years.

America’s two largest age groups propelled the changes: more baby boomers turning 65 or older and millennials who became adults or pushed further into their 20s and early 30s. Also, fewer children were born between 2010 and 2020, according to numbers from the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident.

The decline stems from women delaying having babies until later in life, in many cases to focus on education and careers, according to experts, who noted that birth rates never recovered following the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

“In the short run, the crisis of work-family balance, the lack of affordable child care, stresses associated with health care, housing, and employment stability, all put a damper on birth rates by increasing uncertainty and making it harder to decide to have and raise children,” said Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland.

There are important social and economic consequences to an aging population, including the ability of working-age adults to support older people through Social Security and Medicare contributions.

The Census Bureau calculates a dependency ratio, defined as the number of children plus the number of older adults per 100 working-age people. While the dependency ratio decreased for children from 2010 to 2020, it increased for older adults by 6.8 people.

At the top end of the age spectrum, the number of people over 100 increased by half, from more than 53,000 people to more than 80,000. The share of men living into old age also jumped. Buddy Lebman, a 98-year-old in the St. Louis area, said the key to longevity is good genes and staying active. He plays bridge twice a week, leads a discussion on current events at his retirement community, and is still involved with his synagogue and a school he helped found. Up until five years ago, he went on regular bicycle rides.

“I just recently had my pacemaker checked out, and the doctor told me it’s good for 4 1/2 more years,” Lebman said. “So I have to live at least that amount.”

People reaching age 100 benefited from a century of vaccines and antibiotic developments, improvements in surgery and better treatment of diseases, said Thomas Perls, a professor of medicine at Boston University.

“Many more people who have the genetic makeup and environmental exposures that increase one’s chances of getting to 100, but who would have otherwise died of what are now readily reversible problems, are able to fulfill their survival destiny,” Perls said.

The Census Bureau released two earlier data sets from the 2020 census in 2021: state population figures used to decide how many congressional seats each state gets and redistricting numbers used to draw political districts.

The May data release was delayed by almost two years because of pandemic-related difficulties in gathering the information and efforts by the Census Bureau to implement a new, controversial privacy protection method that uses algorithms to add intentional errors to obscure the identity of any given respondent.

This was the first census since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015. The tally showed that more than half of U.S. households contained coupled partners or spouses who lived together, and same-sex households made up 1.7% of those households. Since the census didn’t ask about sexual orientation, it didn’t capture LGBTQ+ people who are single or don’t live with a partner or spouse.

The median age varied widely by race and ethnicity. Non-Hispanic whites were the oldest cohort, with a median age of 44.5. Hispanics were the youngest, with a median age of 30; and a quarter of all children in the U.S. were Hispanic. Black Americans who weren’t Hispanic had a median age of 35.5. The number was 37.2 for Asians.

Utah, home to the largest Mormon population in the U.S., was the youngest state, with a median age of 31.3, a function of having one of the nation’s highest birthrates. The District of Columbia’s median age of 33.9 was a close second due to the large number of young, working-age adults commonly found in urban areas. North Dakota was the only state where the median age declined, from 37 to 35.8, as an influx of young workers arrived to work in a booming energy sector.

Maine was the oldest state in the U.S., with a median age of 45.1, as more baby boomers aged out of the workforce. Puerto Rico had a median age in the same range, at 45.2, as an exodus of working-age adults left the island after a series of hurricanes and government mismanagement. Older adults in four states — Florida, Maine, Vermont and West Virginia — made up more than a fifth of those states’ populations.

Sumter County, Florida, home of the booming retirement community The Villages, had the highest median age among U.S. counties, at 68.5; while Utah County, home to Provo, Utah, and Brigham Young University, had the lowest at 25.9.

As one of the youngest baby boomers, Chris Stanley, 59, already lives in The Villages. She said her mission in later life is to let younger generations know they can change things despite perhaps not having the same economic opportunities she did.

“I want to impart the urgency that I feel,” she said. “They can make it better.”

While people 65 and older made up 16.8% of the 331 million residents in the U.S. in 2020, the share was still significantly lower than it was in countries like Japan, Italy and Greece, where the age cohort makes up between more than a fifth and more than a quarter of the population. However, their share of the U.S. population will continue to grow as baby boomers age.

“In the long run, immigration is the only way the United States is going to avoid population decline,” Cohen said.

Aurora reflects the nation, prepares for that future

Colorado’s State Demography Office estimates the proportion of older adults in Arapahoe County will grow by 2030, with those 65 and older making up about 17.9% of the population compared to 14.4% in 2021, and adults 45 and older making up 41.1% compared to 38.9%.

Aurora city officials said the city has gotten more intentional about catering services toward older adults and is in the middle of two planning processes that will help it gauge the needs of its older residents.

Currently, the city’s Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Department is creating a master plan that will encompass its network of recreation centers and other locations and programs in Aurora. Department director Brooke Bell said part of creating that plan is asking for feedback from older residents.

“We have a good understanding of how the community uses our spaces, and our programs,” she said. “What we’re now working on is the second phase, and that is to understand where the gaps are.”

Bell said the city expects the plan will be finished by the end of the year. Some of the feedback that she said she has already received from older adults is that they’re interested in spaces set aside for them and unique programming hosted as rec centers across the city and not only at the Aurora Center for Active Adults.

ACAA’s supervisor, Lori Sanchez, said that, since the COVID-19 pandemic, which tended to be more dangerous to adults over the age of 50, the city has seen a resurgence of people looking for community at city recreation centers.

“Certainly we have more people that are wanting to become active, and part of that is coming to the center to participate in the variety of activities and programming that we do have here so that they can remain active, whether it be through fitness or some other kind of leisure program that allows them to stay healthy, mind, body and soul,” she said.

Sanchez was formerly the supervisor of Aurora’s Morning Star Adult Day Program, which closed during the pandemic after more than 30 years of offering meals, activities and some health care services to adults over the age of 55 suffering from memory disorders and other health problems.

The closure of the program was scrutinized last year, after city officials said they were not kept informed about the decision-making process that led to the final decision to end Morning Star.

While Aurora’s City Council didn’t choose to restart the program, they did direct staffers and the Aurora Commission for Older Adults to undertake an assessment of the unmet needs of the city’s older adults.

During the past year, the commission drafted a scope of work for the assessment, which is supposed to be completed by mid-2024.

Jeannie Davis, the chairperson of the commission, said the commission will continue to lead the work on the assessment this year, adding that the closure of Morning Star meant more people are looking for activities that are accessible to the visually impaired and people with coordination problems.

The commission also recently created a housing commission that plans to educate older adults on housing-related topics. Davis talked about how older adults face unique housing challenges, like limited accessibility in older homes and being priced out of their homes of many years as they subsist on a fixed income.

“Their circumstances are changing. They are older now, property taxes have risen to an astronomical level, and many of them can’t afford it,” she said. “Even in multiple living communities, for example, even in Heather Gardens, their maintenance fees are going up, and up, and up.”

She said transportation is another unmet need for Aurorans who are uncomfortable or unwilling to drive a car. Other goals for the commission over the next year include working with PROS and city libraries on programs for older adults; presenting seminars and workshops on topics such as healthcare education, wellness, mental health and advocacy; and overseeing celebration of Older Aurorans Month every May.

Increasing needs for older Aurora residents

Aurora Mental Health and Recovery have also expanded their programming in response to the city’s increasing population of older adults. Carol Reszka is the program manager for AMHR’s older adult counseling center, which she said has doubled its staff since the start of the pandemic.

“We recognize that the population is growing and want to be there for them,” she said.

The team members provide outpatient mental health care to older adults as well as going into nursing homes and assisted living facilities, she said. Providers also do family therapy, which can be helpful for multigenerational households. They are specifically trained on the ways that depression and anxiety manifest in older people, as well as how mental health issues interact with physical health problems and cognitive decline.

Older adults are more aware of mental health concerns than they may have been in the past, but there’s still more of a stigma around seeking treatment than there is among younger people, she said. AMHR has been working to try and help people understand that mental health issues can have as much of an impact on quality of life as a physical illness, and encourage people who are curious about their services to just give them a call, she said.

Reszka said that the team’s work includes helping older adults understand that while their lives may be different now than they were when they were younger, that doesn’t mean that they can’t still find meaning and happiness.

“I think there’s a myth that depression and anxiety are a normal part of aging — they are not,” Reszka said.

Older adults and particularly susceptible to struggling with grief and loss, she said, both grief from the deaths of loved ones or over losing a former lifestyle they once enjoyed. The mental effects of isolation were also a significant issue during the pandemic, along with anxiety.

Reszka said that some of her clients have expressed the feeling that it is “too late” for them to seek mental health treatment at their age, but she counters that retirement can be the perfect time to focus on yourself, after the demands of work and raising children have gone away.

“Being older does not mean being unhappy,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.