Older Population Will More Than Double

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) — Rapid growth in the nation’s older population is likely to put huge pressure on the cost of government safety-net programs, even though the rise of immigrants is helping to increase the total of working-age people, a report said.

The Pew Hispanic Center found that the faster growth in the older population means costs per worker for programs that help seniors and children under 17 will go up.

Taxes paid by the working-age public help pay the costs of programs like Social Security and Medicare, and programs for children. While immigration is padding the totals for that working-age population, the aging of baby boomers is outpacing other groups.

The report also found that the immigrant population is the major factor in population growth, especially Hispanics, who are projected to make up about 30 percent of the population by then.

The Pew researchers project that by 2050 the nation’s population will total about 438 million, as long as today’s immigration, fertility, and other population trends continue.

“Future immigration lessens the load on each worker, but it’s not a big effect. The dependency is going to increase regardless of what we do with immigration,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew Hispanic.

Most of the overall population growth, 82 percent, will be the result of immigrants arriving between 2005 and 2050, as well as their children and grandchildren.

The number of working-age adults — ages 18 to 64 — will rise from 186 million three years ago to 255 million in 2050. Foreign born adults will account for 23 percent in 2050 of the population, while non-Hispanic whites drop from 68 percent to 45 percent of the group.

But the nation’s population of seniors, those 65 and over, will more than double in size to 81 million by 2050, largely due to baby boomer retirements, according to the report by Mr Passel and center senior writer D’Vera Cohn. The last of the baby boom generation will reach 65 in 2029.

That combination will add up to 32 seniors for every 100 working age adults, up from 20 right now. Together with young children, there will be 72 seniors and children per 100 working-age adults in 2050, up from 59 in 2005.

If immigration were halved, there would be 75 seniors and children per 100 working-age adults and with immigration 50 percent higher, there would be 69 dependents per 100 of those in the working-age group.

“The reason this is going to happen is not what’s going on in the future, it’s what went on in the past,” Mr Passel said. “It’s because our parents had so many kids.”

The center’s future population growth numbers are higher than those of the Census, which calculated a population of 420 million in 2050. The researchers said that is because the Census projects lower immigration numbers.