Children still outnumber senior citizens in the US, but in 11 states and nearly half of US counties there are more adults aged 65 and older than children under 18, a new report from the US Census Bureau discovered.
The bureau found that between 2023 and 2024, the population of those aged 65 and older rose by 3.1% to 61.2 million and the population of those aged 18 and younger declined 0.2% to 73.1 million.
According to the bureau, though there are still far more children than senior citizens, trends across the past 20 years show the number of older adults steadily increasing as the number of children drops.
“Children still outnumber older adults in the United States, despite a decline in births this decade,” Lauren Bowers, chief of the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Branch, stated in the report. “However, the gap is narrowing as baby boomers continue to age into their retirement years. In fact, the number of states and counties where older adults outnumber children is on the rise, especially in sparsely populated areas.”
As of 2024, 11 states have larger populations of older adults than children: Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia. In 2020, only Maine, Vermont, and Florida had larger populations of adults over 65.
The bureau also found that between 2020 and 2024, the number of metro areas with higher populations of older adults went from 58 to 112, while the number of US counties with more older adults than children rose from 983 to 1,411.
According to the report, the new median age in the US is 39.1 — a record high — up 0.1 years from 2023 and up 0.6 from 2020. As of 2024, Maine has the oldest population, with a median age of 44.8, and Utah has the youngest, with a median age of 32.4.