PORTLAND, Maine — It’s not news that Maine is the oldest state in the country, but new census data released this week is offering a closer examination of individual communities around the state and how they are changing.
Overall, Maine has aged faster than the nation. When this change in age is mapped, however, it shows more communities are getting older than younger. Economists in the state have raised concern about the pace of Maine’s aging, fearing it will create a shortage of working-age people.
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(One note of about the data: The figures are estimates, not precise measures of changes in age, and reflect longer-term trends in how the median age of communities across the state have changed in surveys from over the past decade.)
An analysis by the Bangor Daily News compared median ages in Maine from American Community Survey estimates collected over five-year periods, from 2005-2009 and 2010-2014. From 2010 to 2014, the state’s median age rose to about 44 from 42.
However, there are certain aging outliers, such as Belfast, Bangor, Calais and Glenburn.The University of Maine also makes Orono and Old Town major outliers against the rest of the state.
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Those first four are among a range of communities where the population was estimated to be younger during 2010-2014 than from 2005-2009. Of course, each started from a different point, and therefore the reasons for this trend can vary.
For example: Some of the communities which saw their median age drop the most during this period were already much older than the state’s average, somewhere between 42 and 44 from 2010 to 2014.
Calais is representative of this trend: The median age dropped more than 7 percent to about 47 from 2010 through 2014. It was 51 in the earlier period.
Some of the state’s cities — like Bangor, Portland and Biddeford — got even younger from points already below the statewide median.
Bangor’s median age dropped by about one year, to about 36. Portland’s median was about 36 also and Biddeford’s was about 35 in the latest estimates. Bangor suburbs, like Carmel and Glenburn, also continued to get younger.
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The reasons for the shifts are hard to divine from the census surveys alone. Demographic trends have shown younger generations are flocking to urban areas and baby boomers are moving out of the cities, by and large.
While local-level information can’t reveal exactly who’s moving in or out, another earlier census survey estimated the county-level dynamics of population change in Maine.
The big picture: York and Cumberland county populations grew from 2010 to 2014, due mostly from an influx of new residents from outside Maine and the U.S. Hancock and Waldo county populations came in as essentially flat, with modest increases in migration.
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Aroostook County led the state for population declines, faced with more deaths than births and about 1,650 people moving away.
Washington County also had more deaths than births during that time, which could ultimately contribute — but not fully account — for the decline in median age in Calais.
In short, the conclusion is unavoidable.
While there are pockets where Maine’s already younger-than-average population is getting younger, the full picture of Maine’s oldest and youngest communities shows the state is now a little bit older, every which way that the numbers are crunched.