U.S. Population in 2030: Rising Older Generation Challenges Demographics - Essay Sample

Introduction

The Census Bureau's 2017 National Population of the U.S show that the beginning of 2030 will be a greater turning point for demographic records, especially for the older generation. The record shows that towards the beginning of 2030 each baby boomer would be 65 years of age or even older than that, which reveals that one person out of five people will hit the age of retirement. The old generation shows in the few decades time; the ageing population would grow to outcompete the population of the younger generation, specifically children, for the first time recorded in the history of America (Morgan, 2014).

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Jonathan Vespa, U.S Census Bureau demographer points out towards the beginning of 2035, 78 million people would be ageing 65years of age and above opposite to the 76.7million people under the age of 18 years of age. The United States population will increase by 79 million, from the original number of 326 million recorded in 2018 to approximately 404 million by the year 2060 and will sail over the mark of 400million in the year 2058 (Redfoot, Feinberg, & Houser,2013). As the ageing population continues to increase, the dependency ratio also increases. At the beginning of 2020 there would be approximately 3.5 working age for the older generation for age retirement per person, while towards 2060, the ratio will decrease to 2.5. The median age computation of the total U.S population is approximately projected to increase from age 38-43 by 2060.

Challenges of an Ageing Population

The high rise in obesity rates. Statistics of 2015-2016 show that people ageing 60 years and above are highly vulnerable to obesity, which stands at 41%. Most ageing populations suffer from divorce problems. Research shows the number of women aged 65 and above divorced increased from 3-14%.

in the year 1980-2018. The ageing population poses a heavy burden on both Medicare and Social Security costs, which will hike the cost from 8.7% of the total GDP today to approximately 11.8% by the year 2050 (Dall,2013).

Advantages of an Aging Population

The educational level among the ageing population in the U.S has increased positively. Among the educated people who were aged 65 and above by 1965 were only 5% with a bachelor's degree, in 2018 the number had hit 29%. The poverty levels have dropped among the people ageing 65 and above for the last 50yrs from 30% to 9% to today.

References

Dall, T. M., Storm, M. V., Chakrabarti, R., Drogan, O., Kieran, C. M., Donofrio, P. D., ... & Vidic, T. R. (2013). Supply and demand analysis of the current and future US neurology workforce. Neurology, 81(5), 470-478.

Morgan, R. C. (2014). What the future of ageing means to all of us: An era of possibilities. Ind. L. Rev., 48, 125.

Redfoot, D., Feinberg, L., & Houser, A. N. (2013). The ageing of the baby boom and the growing care gap: A look at future declines in the availability of family caregivers (pp. 1-12). Washington, DC: AARP Public Policy Institute.