Valley’s elderly population to double in size

The looming boom in the number of people 65 or older in the central Shenandoah carries with it an impact as wide and far reaching as the Valley itself, experts say.

Services and the health care industry, in particular, will feel the strain.

“The biggest thing is to prepare for ... the major growth that we’re going to see,” said Susan Perrone, a demographics and workforce statistician with the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia.

The numbers are staggering, and they carry a decidedly local effect.

While higher concentrations of the elderly in Virginia now live in the Northern Neck region, the ranks of people 65 or older is expected to double around the state and in the Augusta County region in the next 20 years.

About 900,000 of Virginia’s 7.7 million residents, or 12 percent, are older than 65, with that percentage expected to increase 19 percent, to 1.8 million by 2030, Perrone said.

“There’s a much higher number of them because of the baby boom and because they’re living longer,” Perrone said.

The baby boomer generation includes people born between 1946 and 1964. 

“The U.S. population as a whole is definitely aging rapidly,” Perrone said.

About 16 percent of the populations in Waynesboro and Staunton – more than 20,000 people live in each of those communities – is older than 65. The share of that group is 13 percent in Augusta County, where more than 70,000 people live.

In the central Shenandoah Valley region – made up of Highland, Bath, Rockingham, Augusta and Rockbridge counties, as well as the cities and incorporated towns in that region – the region’s over-65 population was expected to increase by 88.9 percent, to 68,401 people by 2030 from 2006, according to projections by the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission. Now at about 260,000 people, the region’s population as a whole is expected to grow by 31.4 percent over the same span.

Though boomers account for much of the projected increase in the number of seniors, there are an array of other factors.

Advances in health care are helping drive the spike, according to Daniel Perry, executive director for the nonprofit Alliance for Aging Research in Washington, D.C. The organization chronicles research on the elderly in a searchable database compiled from more than 200 organizations.

Currently, 6,000 people daily turn 65. By 2011, 10,000 people daily will turn 65, a pace that will continue unabated for the next 18 years, Perry said.

Virginia is among 20 states, Perry said, that will see a doubling of its over-65 population in the next 20 years, and within that number, the ranks of people 85 or older is expected to quadruple.

No industry will be more affected than health care, experts say.

Eighty percent of health care costs associated with the elderly, Perry said, deal in some way with treating chronic diseases, most of which have something to do with aging. As a result, he said, health care costs will increase dramatically “unless we can prevent, postpone or ameriolate age-associated diseases.”

The average 70-year old, he said, suffers from three chronic conditions and is on five medications.

Once seniors reach age 75, the impact on the system increases exponentially. Almost three-fourths of the elderly are in good to excellent health, but that share drops to 55 percent for people 75 or older, Weldon Cooper Center research shows.

“In their 80s and 90s, most of them are encountering multiple diseases in connection with aging,” Perry said.

A plunge in the number of deaths from heart disease and stroke also has factored into the growth in the ranks of the elderly, Perry said.

Covering the costs of health care will be another challenge.

Most seniors have some form of insurance, according to the Weldon Cooper. Six to seven percent have both Medicare and Medicaid coverage, and 84 to 90 percent have Medicare only.

Having testified before the state Senate Subcommittee on Health and Human Resources earlier this year, Perrone said the increasing elderly population will have an impact on services, as well as the number of people using Medicare.

By 2029, the last year in which a baby boomer will turn 65, the U.S. is projected to have between 75 million and 88.5 million people that age or older, making up roughly a fourth of the total population. By 2050, the U.S. Census Bureau expects the over-85 population to be 19 million, more than triple the current 5.4 million.

Numbers such as those, Perrone warned, should grab the attention of leaders in communities here and elsewhere.

“And it’s important to remember, too, that the population is growing as a whole,” she said. “You may have a growth in percentages, but the raw numbers will grow even more.”