How an aging population poses challenges for U.S. - PBS NewsHour

Philip Bump, The Washington Post:

Yes, I mean, I mean, one of the reasons, obviously, also that the United States is getting older is that we had this massive surge in birth from 1946 to 1964 that we call the Baby Boom, right?

This is this massive influx of new Americans all in the same age range. Now, the size of the Baby Boom has changed over time, both because immigration laws were loosened after the Baby Boom itself and, of course, because people die over time.

But this is also a continuation of the pattern that we saw originating with the Baby Boom, back in the 1940s. So, you have this big cluster of people all in the same age group that are reaching age milestones together. And when you think about the year in which there were the most births was 1957, you add 65 to that, the retirement age, and you get 2022.

So we're right at this apex of the Baby Boomers retiring as well. The Baby Boom was also a very heavily white generation. Immigration was restricted by law about a century ago, and not lifted until after the Baby Boom was over. And that led to a very, very white population.

And so what we see when we actually look at the population today is that older Americans are disproportionately white, relative to younger Americans. The youngest Americans are about half nonwhite. There are about — about half of them are Black or Hispanic or Asian. Older Americans, that's simply not the case.

And so then that, of course, overlaps with a lot of the political and cultural trends that we're seeing in the country.

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