In the year 2050, one American in 20 will be over 85, one in five will be retired and the face of the nation will be far more Asian and Hispanic, the U.S. Census Bureau said Wednesday.
In a report on The State of the Nation: 1997, the bureau predicted a slow-growing population that will increase to 394 million by the middle of the next century. The slow growth is due in large part to the progress of baby boomers out of their reproductive years and into retirement.
The non-Hispanic white population is growing very slowly because it's dominated by the baby boomers, and those people aren't growing larger (as a demographic group); they're just growing older, the bureau's Kevin Deardorff said in a telephone interview.
The oldest Americans, those over the age of 85, will be the fastest growing group in the next 55 years, according to the report. The number of these will double from 4 million to 8 million by the year 2030, and more than double again to 18 million by the year 2050, when they will make up about 5 percent of the population.
Retirees -- if retirement age continues to hover around 65 -- will account for 20 percent of all Americans, or 79 million people, by 2050.
This may represent the endgame for the baby boomers, Americans born between 1946 and 1964.
Other high-growth segments of the population include the Asian and Hispanic communities, the report found.
Hispanics currently represent about 11 percent of the total U.S. population but last year accounted for 40 percent of the population increase. Asians represent about 3.5 percent of the population, but accounted for some 14 percent of the increase.
Overall, Deardorff said, population growth will slow to about 1 percent a year and will decelerate.
Currently there are some 265 million Americans, for whom the Census Bureau figures paint a rosy picture of declining poverty, relatively stable child care arrangements, higher levels of education and an overall increase in real household income.
There was a significant drop between 1994 and 1995 in the number of people living in poverty, from 38.1 million to 36.4 million, the report said. But 40 percent of those living in poverty are children under age 18.
Single parenthood was on the rise, with only seven of 10 children living with two parents in 1995. White children were less likely than black or Hispanic children to live in a single-parent home.
Thirty percent of American children were being cared for in organized daycare programs in 1993, the most recent year for which figures were available. That was an increase from 23 percent in 1991.
Some 41 million Americans lacked health insurance in 1995, the bureau found, a figure unchanged from the previous year.
More Americans owned their own homes in 1995 -- 65 percent -- than in any year since 1983.