Pennsylvania 'advanced age' population balloons as number of kids shrinks

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(The Center Square) - When a new Legislature gets to work in Harrisburg next year it will grapple with a state financial picture in which where the ink is mostly red - but the bigger picture is that Pennsylvania continues to turn gray.

The school-age population in the state shrank by more than 3% in the five years ended in 2025 and will shrink at even greater rates between now and 2035, according to a new report from the state Independent Fiscal Office. Meanwhile, the "advanced age" category increased by nearly 10% in the same stretch and will continue growing at a rate of 18% or more.

Lawmakers in Harrisburg have long been aware that Pennsylvania's population is, on average, getting older. The IFO report puts fresh emphasis on the glaring difference between the diminishing number of young people and the exploding elderly population.

Legislators who begin a new session of two years of lawmaking in early 2027 will be confronted by a structural deficit of roughly $5 billion. At the same time, the IFO report shows the number of working-age people between 20 and 64 - the source of a huge chunk of the state's tax revenue - shrank in the latest five-year period and is expected to continue that trend.

Other data points include:

• The number of children between 10 and 14 was about 775,000 in 2020 and is expected to decline to 684,000 by 2035.
• The number of people between 80 and 84 years old was about 291,000 in 2020 and is expected to increase to 496,000 by 2035.
• Babies and toddlers will continue to decline in number. The study shows there were 686,000 children from newborn to four years old in 2020, and the figure for 2035 is projected to be 599,000.
• Deaths outnumbered births by 79,000 between 2020 and 2025, and that gap is projected to increase to 213,000 for 2030 to 2035.

Bernie Gallagher, executive director of the Keystone Research Center, a progressive think tank, pointed to a 10-year strategic plan for improving services to seniors that the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro unveiled more than two years ago. Dubbed "Aging Our Way, PA", the plan laid out a gamut of initiatives related to Alzheimer's Disease, long-term care, licensing at skilled nursing facilities, and digital literacy, among many others.

"There is already a policy directive that is out there," Gallagher said.

The departure of young people from the state, he said, could be addressed by embracing concepts like the parental leave policy approved in Allegheny County recently. It was billed as the nation's first county-level mandate that employers of a certain size provide leave for new parents.

"It is the quality of life that people are weighing," Gallagher said.

Nathan Benefield, chief policy officer at the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative think tank, said the trends in the IFO report underscore big financial challenges for the state. The growing number of elderly add to government costs for Medicaid and long-term care, while the declining number of working-age people crimps revenue.

Pennsylvania, he said, has a "long ways to go" in ridding such programs of waste, fraud, and erroneous reporting. He pointed to the 2025 release of an audit that found hundreds of thousands of government dollars were erroneously paid out under a UPMC Health Plan arrangement, including some payments to people who had passed away.

Benefield also said state lawmakers have been reluctant to reduce spending on schools even though enrollment in some places - like the state population of school-aged children in general - is diminishing.

Putting in more money when there is a decline in the number of students "really stretches the taxpayers and really isn't a good funding model," Benefield said.