Tuesday, March 09, 2010

The Graying of America

American age distribution from 1900 to 2050:

The average American is aging… and fast.  Advances in public health — especially related to childbirth, infant mortality, and infectious disease — have led to longer lives.   “The result is that death has been permanently shifted from a phenomenon among the young to one of the old.”  This means that the age distribution in the U.S. has shifted from one shaped like a neat pyramid (in 1900), to one shaped kind of like a house (in 2000), to whatever shape that is they’re predicting in 2050:

graying_america

(HT Dustin)

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