Visualizing the Spatial Distribution of Aging Places in the United States,2000 to 2020

Abstract

Population aging has important sociological implications at the community level, including reductions in local workforce size, greater demand for health and social services, and changing housing needs. Communities also differ in their ability to support aging populations, such as in rural areas, where population decline and limited-service infrastructure may result in challenges due to these population changes. This data visualization describes the spatial distribution of aging places in the United States across two decades, comparing 2000–2010 and 2010–2020. The authors categorize counties into three types of aging places: (1) nonaging counties, (2) aging-in-place counties, and (3) retirement destination counties. For 2000 to 2010, the authors show that aging counties were relatively limited in number and most counties were classified as nonaging. The 2010–2020 map reveals a striking transformation driven primarily by the expansion of aging-in-place counties. This shift reflects not only the addition of new aging-in-place counties but also the reclassification of many retirement destinations as aging-in-place counties. In total, the number of counties classified as aging increased from 476 to 1,353, showing a broad diffusion of aging county status across the United States. These maps provide a spatial foundation for examining how demographic pathways to aging shape inequality and well-being among older adults.

Populations across many developed countries are experiencing rapid demographic aging. With the transition of the “baby boomer” generation into retirement age (i.e., 65 years or older) beginning in 2011, the United States has experienced unprecedented, rapid aging. However, population aging—which refers to aging of the population, rather than individual-level aging—has had disproportionate effects on some places more than others (Cromartie 2018). This population aging has important sociological implications at the community level, including reductions in local workforce size, greater demand for health and social services, and changing housing needs (Henderson, Maniam, and Leavell 2017). Additionally, communities differ in their ability to support aging populations, such as in rural areas, where population decline and limited-service infrastructure may result in challenges due to these population changes (Brown and Glasgow 2008; Glasgow and Berry 2013). Understanding where and how counties are aging, therefore, provides important insight into the spatial distribution of demographic changes and the local contexts in which communities must adapt. Scholars of population aging emphasize two important demographic pathways through which places become disproportionately older: aging-in-place and retirement destinations (Brown and Glasgow 2008; Glasgow and Berry 2013).

Drawing on county-level data from the U.S. census and the Applied Population Laboratory (Egan-Robertson et al. 2024), we categorize counties into three types of aging places: (1) nonaging, (2) aging-in-place, and (3) aging retirement destination. To make these distinctions, we follow conventions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service and classify counties as aging places if their share of the population aged 65 and older exceeds 20 percent in the 2010 or 2020 census and classify counties that do not meet this criterion as nonaging counties. ¹ Next, aging places were subdivided on the basis of the source of age-specific population change. Among the aging places, those experiencing greater than 15 percent in-migration of the 65-and-older population in the previous decade (e.g., 2000–2010, 2010–2020) were classified as aging retirement destinations. Those considered aging-in-place are the remaining aging counties.

The maps shown here visualize county-level types of aging places across two decades, comparing 2000 to 2010 with 2010 to 2020. From 2000 to 2010 (Figure 1a), aging counties were relatively limited in number; 403 counties were classified as aging-in-place (black), while 73 counties were classified as aging retirement destinations (orange). Most counties were classified as nonaging (gray; n = 2,656 [84.8 percent]). The spatial concentration of aging retirement destinations during this period is consistent with documented patterns of retirement migration, particularly in amenity rich regions that have historically attracted older migrants later in life (Brown and Glasgow 2008).

Figure 1.

Demographic aging among U.S. counties: county aging among 65-and-older populations, 2000 to 2020. (a) Types of aging places (2000–2010). (b) Types of aging places (2010–2020). Data are publicly available from the U.S. Census Bureau. These maps illustrate the spatial distribution of demographic aging among counties, as well as the processes that led to population aging. Aging retirement destinations are counties with greater than 20 percent of the population aged 65 and older and greater than 15 percent in-migration from the 65-and-older population in a decade, while aging-in-place are those counties with only greater than 20 percent of population aged 65 and older. The figure was created using Jann’s (2023) GEOPLOT command in Stata. Several Alaskan counties are excluded because of boundary changes during the period of analysis.

The 2010–2020 map (Figure 1b) reveals a striking transformation driven primarily by the expansion of aging-in-place counties. The number of aging-in-place counties increased sharply from 403 to 1,286, whereas the number of aging retirement places decreased modestly from 73 to 67. Importantly, this shift reflects not only the addition of new aging-in-place counties from nonaging (n = 854) but also the reclassification of some retirement destinations as aging-in-place counties (n = 44). In total, the number of counties classified as aging increased from 476 to 1,353, showing a broad diffusion of aging county status across the United States. Spatially, the expansion of aging-in-place counties is especially prominent in particular regions. In the Great Plains and parts of Appalachia, population aging reflects long-standing out-migration of younger adults, leaving older residents behind and producing disproportionately older age structures over time (Brown and Glasgow 2008). For the Upper Midwest, it represents fluctuations in historical retirement migration that have not persisted across decades (Kulcsar, Bolender, and Brown 2008).

These maps show how population aging is occurring unequally and through different pathways across the United States. Prior work suggests that aging-in-place counties may face distinct constraints related to service provision and health care access compared with aging retirement destinations, which are more directly shaped by selective in-migration (Brown and Glasgow 2008; Glasgow and Arguillas 2008). Future work should explore regional differences in the drivers of aging-in-place and retirement migration. By classifying counties into retirement destination, aging-in-place, and nonaging places, and by visualizing transitions between them over time, these maps provide a spatial foundation for examining how demographic pathways to aging shape inequality and well-being among older adults.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231261446047 – Supplemental material for Visualizing the Spatial Distribution of Aging Places in the United States, 2000 to 2020

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231261446047 for Visualizing the Spatial Distribution of Aging Places in the United States, 2000 to 2020 by Paige E. Price, Paige Kelly and Ryan P. Thombs in Socius