Following the national trend, the median age in Massachusetts rose slightly from 2021 to 2022, according to newly released data from the US Census Bureau.
The median age rose from 39.9 years to 40.1 years. That means half the state’s population is older than 40.1 and half is younger.
Nationally, the median age increased from 38.7 years to 38.9 years. No states experienced a decline in median age. Four states saw their median age stay the same, the Census Bureau said.
“As the nation’s median age creeps closer to 40, you can really see how the aging of baby boomers, and now their children — sometimes called echo boomers — is impacting the median age,” Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, said in a statement. She noted that “birth rates have gradually declined over the past two decades. Without a rapidly growing young population, the U.S. median age will likely continue its slow but steady rise.”
“It’s simple arithmetic,” Andrew A. Beveridge, president of Social Explorer, a demographic data firm, told The New York Times. “Fewer kids are being born.”
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The three oldest states in the US were found in New England. Maine had the highest median age in the country at 44.8, followed by New Hampshire at 43.3 and Vermont at 43.2. Seventeen of the states had median ages above 40.
At the other end of the spectrum, Utah (31.9), the District of Columbia (34.8), and Texas (35.5) had the lowest median ages in the nation.
The nation has gotten older quickly in the past few decades. The median age has risen from 30 in 1980 and 35.3 in 2000, according to the Census Bureau.
People were much younger when the country was younger. The Census says that in 1820 the median age was 16.7 years.
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Seventeen percent of US residents were 65 and older in 2020 and that number is expected to grow to 22 percent, or nearly 1 in 4, by 2040, according to the US Administration on Aging.
In Massachusetts, about 1.2 million people were 65 and older in 2020. That number was up 32.2 percent from 2010, the agency said.
Martin Finucane can be reached at martin.finucane@globe.com. Daigo Fujiwara can be reached at daigo.fujiwara@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @DaigoFuji.