Retirement-age newcomers, still active, bring a variety of useful skills to rural communities

Rural America could get a welcome boost as more active people of retirement age move into their communities. A report from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire shows that rural areas are getting more than their share of new residents over age 60. Cornell University researchers Nina Glasgow and David Brown write, "While young people are much more likely than older adults to move, almost 10 percent of Americans aged 60+ migrated between counties during 1995 to 2000, with a disproportionate share moving to rural communities."

"Older in-movers are active in a wide range of social, civic, religious, and service organizations, and they are especially likely to volunteer," Glasgow and Brown report. "Community leaders we interviewed reported that through their labor, technical expertise, and financial contributions, older in-movers are a driving force in community activities and organizations."

It appears that the trend is rising as baby boomers approach retirement age. "If new cohorts of older persons maintain the migration behavior of current retirees, older in-migration to rural areas will persist into the future," write Glasgow and Brown. "There seems little question that this will be the case, given the fact that nonmetropolitan areas have experienced net in-migration at ages 60+ during three of the last five decades, with the rate of in-migration at these ages being particularly high during the rural growth decades of the 1970s and 1990s."

Glasgow is a senior research associate in the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y., and Brown is a professor of development sociology, director of the univresity's Community and Rural Development Institute and associate director of the Cornell Population Program. Click here to read their full report.