Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Did Trump’s lawyers catch Michael Cohen in a ‘lie’? Let’s take a look.

Now playing off-Broadway: Trump’s synchronized sycophants

Trump’s courtroom enablers

The world’s coolest hotels want to tell you a story

6 Airbnb red flags to spot before you make a booking mistake

Some cruise prices are about to get a little more clear

Look to the cloud to protect the life documents saved on your computer

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz.

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Puppy abandoned with heart-rending note is adopted, named Minerva

Man, 91, shocks tiny firehouse with $500K gift: ‘Nobody knew how much I’d saved’

Retired cop meets abandoned baby he helped 23 years ago: ‘What are the odds?’

Why this company’s biggest fans turned against it

These ISIS news anchors are AI fakes. Their propaganda is real.

Even remote and hybrid work can burn you out. Here’s how to avoid it.

Miss Manners: Longtime friends lose minds over canceled dinner plans

Carolyn Hax: After holiday meals, guests rush the kitchen to claim the leftovers

Ask Amy: Retired couple misses social activities since the pandemic

In photos: The scene in Houston after severe storms killed at least 4 people

Rep. AOC's 'people-first' approach

Rep. Delia Ramirez on organizing power and money

Elections 2024 live updates: Biden continues outreach to Black voters; Trump heading to Minnesota

At campus protests, ‘DO NOT TALK TO THE MEDIA’!

CNN gets a presidential debate — and a much-needed win

Bryce Harper, Joey Gallo and a bond forged by baseball since they were kids

Walter Johnson’s jersey from 1920 showdown with Babe Ruth is up for auction

A taco will always be a taco — no matter what we call it

No one is rocking in the ‘free world’

Kenyan president aims to attract green investment during U.S. visit

On Gaza, Biden is right and Netanyahu is wrong

Tariffs against China hamstring the transition to a clean energy future

The Post’s choices in Northern Virginia’s U.S. House primaries

States see legalized sports betting as a tax windfall — but at what cost?

Trump

See more coverage in your recommendations

Get the weekly Campaign Moment newsletter

Set alerts for major election developments

Election 2024

The Campaign Moment newsletter

Politics alerts

Annabelle Marcovici

A news release from the Census Bureau <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-estimates-characteristics.html" target=_blank>published</a> on Thursday morning summarized three-quarters of a century of American history succinctly. It was titled, “America Is Getting Older.”

This is the Census Bureau, so the assertion was backed up with data. The median age in the U.S. rose to 38.9 years in 2022, up 0.2 years from 2021. Over the past year, 46 states saw increases in their median ages. Four states (and D.C.) saw no change.

This isn’t surprising but is, instead, a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/18/america-has-gotten-older-since-2010-which-is-bigger-deal-than-it-sounds/" target="_blank">continuation</a> of a long-standing trend. But there is an important detail that’s easy to overlook here: The increase in age is largely a function of <i>White</i> Americans getting older — a distinction that itself helps explain an awful lot about American culture and politics in the moment.

Sign up for How To Read This Chart, a weekly data newsletter from Philip Bump

In January, my book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696653/the-aftermath-by-philip-bump/" target=_blank>“The Aftermath”</a> was published. It looks at precisely this issue, how the aging of the population overlaps with the tensions the country is experiencing. The subtitle of the book is “The Last Days of the baby boom and the Future of Power in America,” crystallizing a central point here. America is getting older because the massive baby boom is getting older, and White America is at the center of that aging process because the baby boom was so heavily White.

To distill some big chunks of the book fairly quickly, it’s useful to understand how unusually large the baby boom was relative to the population. There were about 140 million Americans in 1945, before the boom started. Over the next 19 years, it’s estimated that nearly 76 million babies were born. That’s a huge increase in the population — but also one contained within a narrow age range.

The baby boom lasted from 1946 to 1964, according to the Census Bureau, making baby boomers aged 58 to 76 last year. Why has there been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/10/social-security-biden-medicare-republicans/" target=_blank>so much attention</a> paid to Social Security and Medicare of late? Well, the year with the most births during the boom was 1957. Add the traditional retirement age of 65 to 1957 and you get … 2022.

At the same time, the boom began in a period when immigration was constrained. It wasn’t until after the boom ended that immigration laws were liberalized, leading to an increase in residents from Asia, Mexico and Central America. In 1970, about <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190312090613/https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/twps0076.pdf" target=_blank>84 percent</a> of the country was non-Hispanic White, compared to <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045222" target=_blank>59 percent</a> in 2022. (In 1970, the median age was <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1972/dec/pc-s1-10.html" target=_blank>just over 28</a>.)

I’ll interject here to note that even these racial delineations are murkier than they seem. Our understanding of race in the U.S. is dependent upon how race is measured by the Census Bureau and others, and that data collection has traditionally been heavily oversimplified. We use the descriptor “non-Hispanic White” because the federal government still categorizes “Hispanic” as an ethnicity instead of a race, but even with that level of complexity we still generally use too-narrow categorizations. It is the case both that America is currently more diverse than the top-line numbers would suggest and that the increase in diversity projected for the future is probably overstated — but I’ll leave the explanation for that to the book.

A few years ago, the Census Bureau released data showing the age of Americans by race. At that point, the most common age for a White American was 58. The most common age for a non-White American — Black, Hispanic, Asian, mixed-race, etc. — was 27. For Hispanics, the most common age was 11.

Using data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey compiled by <a href="https://www.ipums.org/" target=_blank>IPUMS</a>, we can approximate a similar chart for the year 2022. What you’ll notice is that the White population curve is skewed significantly to the right, while the curves for other population groups is either larger at younger ages or relatively flat.

This data suggests that most White residents of the U.S. are older than the country’s median age, while most Asian, Black and Hispanic residents are younger than it. Whites make up 52 percent of the population under the median age — and two-thirds of the population over it.

It’s easy to see how this percolates into the political and cultural conversations. We have a heavily White older population that is competing for power and resources — like funding for schools or senior centers — with a more-diverse younger population. We have a partisan divide that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/21/pew-poll-biden-analysis/" target=_blank>overlaps</a> with the age divide. We have explicit and implicit political appeals that center on the country’s changed demography.

It’s important that America is aging as the baby boom gets older. It’s important, too, that we recognize how this aging is lopsidedly a function of one demographic group — a group that votes more heavily and (relative to younger people) more heavily Republican.

There’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/06/22/census-race-estimates-2022/f8e5c38c-10b2-11ee-8d22-5f65b2e2f6ad_story.html" target=_blank>an interesting footnote</a> to the new Census Bureau data. The White population in the U.S. would have declined last year, but for one factor: immigration.

The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America

Ohio State University

Philip Bump is a Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter <a href="https://wapo.st/3m3QTiy">How To Read This Chart</a> and is the author of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696653/the-aftermath-by-philip-bump/">The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America</a>.

Philip Bump

the-washington-post

Home Health Care Shortage

For The Washington Post

The Washington Post

staff

Biden administration

The Fix

The Briefs

Polling

Democracy in America

Balance of Power Pair

U.S. House Aggregate

U.S. Senate Aggregate

Politics

washpost

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/politics&limit=20

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.