Wisconsin is getting older.
The state’s over-65 population went from 777,314 in the 2010 census to 1,060,017 in 2020. And that’s expected to increase, according to state Department of Administration projections, to over 1.3 million by 2030 before leveling off.
Meanwhile, the working age population is holding steady — meaning that a growing proportion of Wisconsinites will be over 65.
News with a little more humanity
WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.
In an ongoing series, WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” is looking at the impact of the state’s aging population on workforce needs, community services and more.
Demographer David Egan-Robertson kicked things off in an interview with “Wisconsin Today,” looking at the big trends in the state’s population. Egan-Robertson has followed this story for years in his work with the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The following interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
Rob Ferrett: How big is this shift to an older population in Wisconsin?
David Egan-Robertson: The fastest age range of growth is, has been, and probably for the next decade, will be in the age 65-plus group. I went back to 2010 and looked forward to the latest age estimates that the Census Bureau provided, which run through 2024. Across that time in Wisconsin, the state gained about 400,000 more seniors, and that was about a 50 percent increase over the number in 2010.
RF: Are we seeing what we might call the prime workforce demographic keeping up with that pace?
DER: No. As demographers, we usually define the traditional working-age population as ages 18 to 64, and that has stayed pretty level for quite some time.
From 2010 to 2020, that age group from 18 to 64 basically stayed level in Wisconsin and the elderly population grew. The younger population — under seven, under age 18 — declined during that time.
RF: What are the big stories in the last seven decades that are putting us in this trend now?
DER: At the older ages, much of the increase is being driven by the large baby boom population. These were people born from about 1946 through 1964. The average size of those single-year age cohorts, like around age 65 right now, is over 4 million people. So you’ve got this big wave that really started in 1946 to ’64, they’re now largely reaching past age 65. In fact, the front edge of the baby boom that was born in 1946 will actually hit 80 this year.
RF: And then there’s migration. If we have lots of people maybe in that older age group, we might think, “Well, that’s OK, younger people might move in and fill out the workforce.” What do we see when it comes to people moving in and out of Wisconsin?
DER: In terms of international migration, the Census Bureau collects data, asking people who are born in foreign countries when they moved from abroad. And so in the past 15 years or so, about 135,000 people have moved into Wisconsin from other countries. So it’s not a huge percentage. That’s a little more than two percent of our state’s population.
But international migrants, as you might expect, are generally younger than what we call the native-born population. In fact, their median age is about 31 and a half, whereas statewide, the median age is 40 and a half.
Among immigrants over the last 14-15 years, more than half of them are in the age range of 25 to 44. So they are actually helping, in a way, keep down our median age and helping to build up and fill that working-age population.
RF: This is not exactly the same story in every county in the state, is it?
DER: No, not at all. For decades now, it’s been very traditional for the up north counties to have a lot more older people. People are retiring up there and those counties already have a third of their population over age 65. They also have a much smaller proportion in a lot of northern counties in terms of kids under age 18.
The number of seniors is more than twice the number of children in a lot of counties now, whereas statewide, they’re actually fairly even. The state’s over-65 population is about 20 percent, under age 18 is about 21 percent. So they’re very close in terms of percentages, but they’re skewed quite widely in terms of a lot of the northern counties in Wisconsin, which might help to portend what’s going to happen in the future for the counties that are more in the southern part of the state.
