Who Are We - More Elders, Fewer Children

Growing life expectancy and decreasing fertility (discussed under the last topic), have resulted in an increase in the elderly population (those 65 years old and older) and a smaller population of children and youths (the cohorts aged 0 to 19 years).

The graphic charts this phenomenon over a period of 150 years.

We are now ready to answer the question posed in the introduction to this topic. Are we living too long? Will the support of masses of dependents — the young and the old — bankrupt those who are in the middle?

It appears that the answer is "No." Demographers speak of a dependency ratio. This is the number of people — the young and the old — whom the economically active population in the middle must support. The ratio in 2000 was 70, i.e., 100 economically active people had to support 70 others, a mixture of children, youths, and the retired.

In 1850, the dependency ratio was much higher — 122. Translated to the household level, this meant (roughly) that a couple had to care for two children and an elderly person. Dependents were overwhelmingly the young, in those days, not the elderly. Pneumonia carried off the old in the days before sulfa drugs were invented. By 2000 the situation had changed. The elderly population had risen to 12.7% of the total population, up from 2.5% in 1850 and 4.1% in 1900. But children and youths, who had been more than half of the population in the middle of the 19th century, were less than a third of total population in 2000. In effect, the number of dependents per economically active adult had declined from 1.22 to less than one person (0.7).

What has changed — whether we look back 100 or 150 years — is that care of the elderly has become an institutionalized social endeavor, with cross-generational transfer payments (Social Security) having a recognizable budgetary form at the national level. Another change is that improvements in pharmaceutical and medical interventions have significantly increased the costs of caring for the elderly. Finally, the Baby Boom, which began in the late 1940s, will significantly increase the number of those retiring in the early part of the 21st century. Will that have a severe impact?

A good deal of discussion surrounds the subject now and will in coming years. But the dependency ratio, although it is predicted to rise (after a drop by 2010 and again by 2020) to 86 per 100 economically active by 2030 — this number is well below the level that the 19th century took in its stride.

May you live long and have many children.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Population Estimates, and Historical Statistics of the United States.