Maine and West Virginia are the only two states in which deaths outnumber births. Additionally Maine has an aging population; it has more residents 65 and older than 18 and younger which has implications for the labor pool. Follow our link to the Boston Globe for the complete article and to read how the town of Dover-Foxcroft is becoming a laboratory for how rural aging areas face the problems affecting their aging residents. Read More.
A change is happening in Maine with wide-ranging effects: State is seeing more deaths than births
By Brian MacQuarrie | Boston Globe
DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine — Ted Marshall, 87, allowed his Maine stoicism to lapse for an instant, pursing his lips in a flicker of emotion. He thought of the friends he had lost and the spouses they left behind, elderly men and women who now live alone in the oldest county in the country’s oldest state.
“It hasn’t been easy for them,” Marshall said, sitting with his wife, Jane, in an 18th-century home beside the frozen Piscataquis River.
The couple are active at an age when many of their peers have slowed almost to a stop. Ted Marshall, an Army veteran whose only time “away” was during the Korean War, still cleans carpets for a living and even plows snow from his neighbors’ driveways for free.
But across the state, the rapid aging of Maine’s population — a trend known by some as the “silver tsunami” — has reached a crucial tipping point, many say. As baby boomers head into retirement, and many young people move away in search of opportunity, Maine is one of only two states, along with West Virginia, where deaths now outnumber births.Continue Reading
