Retirement counties' population grew as both retirees and younger age groups moved in.
The movement of retirees into rural and smalltown areas was an important trend during the 1960's and 1970's. Factors contributing to the trend included improved health of older people, earlier retirement ages, higher retirement incomes, and living conditions and amenities of rural areas and small towns that made them desirable sites for retirement. Counties serving asretirement-destination areas for older people continue to represent an important category in the typology, although the trend slowed partly because of the economic slump of the early 1980's and an associated drop in real estate activity, reducing the number of retirement destination areas significantly during the 1980's. The retirement group now includes 190 counties, of which 158 were retirement counties in the 1979 typology. Population aged 60 and above in these counties increased by at least 15 percent from inmovement of people between 1980 and 1990. The increases ranged from 15 percent to 121 percent.
Over 80 percent of retirement counties are located in the South and West (fig. 13). They are more prevalent in the traditional retirement areas with warm climates of Florida and parts of the Southwest, and in lake, reservoir, coastal, or scenic upland areas. Over half of the nonmetro counties in Arizona, Florida, and Hawaii are retirement-destination areas. States with less than half but more than a quarter of nonmetro counties serving as retirement areas include California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, and North Carolina. Retirement counties tend to be more rural, with few having over 20,00 people living in a city or town. Nearly 40 percent of the counties are totally rural, and another 50 percent have from 2,500 to 20,000 population living in towns or small cities.
Many retirement counties are also recreation and resort areas, as evidenced by a considerable number of overlaps with Federal lands and services counties. As a result, they attract both younger populations and retirees. While the average growth in population aged 65 and over was 45.4 percent during the 1980's, the 18 to 34 and 35 to 64 age groups also grew by 9.3 and 35.4 percent, respectively. Compared with other county types, the retirement group was the only type with a population gain in the younger age category, and had the highest growth in the 35 to 64 age group of all the types. The larger share of the younger population helps explain the fact that the share of population that was 65 years old and over ( 17.8 percent) in 1990 was only moderately higher than the all-nonmetro average of 15.9 percent (table 7). Unlike farming counties, where outmovement of younger population has left behind a share of elderly population (18.3 percent) even higher than that for retirement counties, the growth in both younger and older aged populations has created a favorable mix for the economic growth and expansion in retirement counties during the 1980's.
Population and economic growth characterized the retirement counties during the 1980's. Nearly all retirement counties experienced population growth. Their average population growth rate from 1980 to 1990 was 23 percent, the highest of all 11 types (versus 0.6 for all-nonmetro counties). Furthermore, retirement counties in all four regions gained population with rates ranging from a low of 15 percent in the Midwest to 28 percent in the Northeast. The retirement group was the only type that had inmigration overall and in all regions.
Nearly all retirement counties experienced job growth during the decade; 60 percent grew faster than the national average. These counties also had the highest job growth (34.3 percent) and earnings growth (25.9 percent) of all types. Jobs grew more than three times faster than the all- nonmetro rate due in part to growth in services, government, and construction jobs. Nearly three-fifths of jobs in the retirement group were in the services sector (fig. 14).
Table 7--Retirement-destination counties: Selected
characteristics
Retire- All-
ment nonmetro
Item Unit counties counties
--------------------------- ------- ------- -------
Counties Number 190 2,276
Population, 1990 Thousands 5,205 50,898
Elderly population, 1990(1) Percent 17.8 15.9
Population density, 1990(1,2) Number 38.3 36.3
Population change, 1980-90(1) Percent 22.7 .6
Per capita income, 1989(1) Dollars 13,698 13,580
Per capita transfer income,
1989(1) do. 2,876 2,636
Job growth, 1979-89:(3) Percent 34.3 10.6
Service job growth, 1979-89(3) do. 65.0 36.9
(1) Unweighted county averages.
(2) Persons per square mile.
(3) Calculated from aggregated data.
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