The gap between the populations is projected to ‘drastically widen’ in the coming years.
By Catholics for Catholics
There’s no doubt about it: the U.S. population is getting older.
According to a story by the Epoch Times, the population all over the world of older adults has overshadowed that of younger children, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a new report.
The percentage of the global population that is people aged 65 and older by 2025 climbed above the percentage of people aged zero to 5, Census Bureau and Australian National University demographers said in the report, released on Aug. 31.
“This is the first time this ‘crossing’ of the youngest and oldest age groups has happened in human history and is projected to drastically widen in the coming years,” the demographers said.
According to the Times’s story, that’s one of the indicators of an aging populace. There are two main reasons —decaying fertility, which lowers the number of children, and falling death rates, which leads to more people living to older ages.
Including the United States and Canada, fertility rates in developed countries have been reaching record lows in recent years and are much lower than the replacement level of about two births per couple.
In 2025, the United States ranked as the 48th-oldest country out of 227, with 18.9 percent of its population being seniors. By 2060, older adults will make up 23.4 percent of the U.S. population, if the projections are accurate. But the United States would fall to 110th place globally in terms of oldest countries, because other countries are aging more rapidly, the report states.
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