What Accounts for the Population Shift?
Increased life expectancy
High in-migration of retirees
Graying of the baby boomers
Notes:
The primary cause of the aging of our population is the decrease in the number of children families are having, although this may seem surprising. Fewer children automatically means that older adults are a larger percentage of the population. (Birth rates have declined since the mid-1960s. In 1960, North Carolina’s birth rate was 24.1 per 1,000 population; in 1996 it was 14.3 per 1,000.)
Increased life expectancy plays a role. Most of the increase results from babies surviving their first year of life, although there have been steady, small increases in the years after age 60, as well. (To take white males as an example, life expectancy at birth increased 14 years between 1930 and 1990, from 59 to 73. However, in that same time period, men who reached 60 saw additional life expectancy rise from 14 to almost 19 additional years, an increase of only 5 additional years.)
Our state is one of the more popular retirement states. As of 1990, we ranked third in terms of net migration among persons age 65+, numbering about 38,000 people.
Until 1998, the baby boomers made up the largest generations of children ever born in the U.S. Even if their life expectancy had not increased, they would still become the largest group of older adults ever.