Turn any article into a podcast. Upgrade now to start listening.
Members can share articles with friends & family to bypass the paywall.
There’s no way around it: America is getting older.
The country’s median age climbed to a record-high 39.4 in 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, up from 35.6 in 2001. Almost one-third of Americans are over the age of 55, compared with roughly a quarter of the population in 2010.
It would be tempting to attribute this phenomenon to Americans living longer, but the data shows that is the less significant of two main factors. While life expectancy increased from 78.1 in 2007 to 79.0 in 2024—a change of just over 1 percent—the general fertility rate, a measure of births per 1,000 women aged 15-44, fell by 22 percent over that same period. Life expectancy may be creeping upward, but over the past decade, American women have given birth at a lower rate than any cohort since the late 1970s, and demographic trends are adjusting accordingly.
