Thursday, February 27, 2020

An aging America could present problems for rural areas

"The nation’s population is growing older, posing financial and economic challenges for states around the U.S. in the years ahead, a credit rating agency cautioned this week," Bill Lucia reports for Route Fifty. "S&P Global Ratings notes in a brief that by 2035 the Census Bureau projects the number of people aged 65 and older will outnumber those under 18 for the first time in the nation’s history."

Too many seniors who need Medicare, Social Security, and sometimes Medicaid, combined with not enough younger working people to pay into those systems, could cause a lot of pain for state and federal budgets, Lucia reports. The problem will be especially acute for rural areas, which already have older populations.

"More births and greater in-migration of young people from foreign countries could act as counterweights to the aging population, but are not on pace to do so at current levels," Lucia reports.

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