The population of aging baby boomers in California will double by 2050. Downsizing will be a hot topic, and one-story homes will be very popular! Will we see baby-boomer communes?
From the beach party movies of the 1960s to the hippies of the 1970s and Silicon Valley’s baby billionaires today, California has long projected a youthful ambiance.
That’s about to change in a big way. The aging of California’s huge post-World War II baby-boom generation, combined with plummeting birth and immigration rates, means the Golden State is quickly going gray.
A huge growth in the over-65 population, from about 4.5 million today to more than 11 million by 2050 – nearly a quarter of the state’s residents then – will disrupt labor markets as it imposes major new costs on taxpayers for health care and other services.
It could also alter the state’s politics as the elderly become a decisive voting bloc, not only because of rising numbers but because the propensity to vote increases with age.
First, the numbers.
Roughly 11 percent of the nearly 40 million Californians today are 65-plus. The state Department of Finance estimates that by 2020, the over-65 cohort will rise to 15 percent, then to nearly 20 percent by 2030, when the youngest of the baby boomers will pass 65, and reach 22.3 percent by 2050, double the current proportion.
One state document puts it this way: “California will surpass the national average for age by 2040 even though it is currently the sixth youngest state in the nation with only 11 percent of its population 65 and older.
Read full article here – many interesting conclusions:
