In 2028: Coping with the coming boom

Within the next two decades, Utah's baby boomers will be Utah's elderly. If you want a shorthand way to understand the ramifications, says Shauna O'Neil, look at garbage cans.

Right now, notes the Salt Lake County Aging Services director, on every garbage route in the county there are at least a couple of houses where an elderly resident can't maneuver the unwieldy cans out to the curb.

So the garbage man gets out of the truck, pushes the cans out to the street, empties them and returns them back down the driveway. It's time-intensive help — which is OK if there are only a few elderly residents per route.

"But what happens," O'Neil asks, "when there are 15 or 20?"

From garbage cans to home health to bus routes, the graying of Utah will mean an increased need for infrastructure and services, because even though many of those seniors will still be vital and independent — many still working past traditional retirement age or providing crucial volunteer help in schools and other institutions — the sheer numbers of those baby boomers also mean there will be more people with needs. And boomers, say aging experts only half jokingly, will expect services in ways that their less-demanding parents haven't.

"I think, as a state, we're in denial about the problems that are coming," says Bill Farley, director of the W.D. Goodwill Initiatives on Aging, part of the University of Utah's College of Social Work. "I don't think our state Legislature has taken the responsibility for dealing with this problem" — including funding programs that help seniors stay in their homes as they become more frail. Already there are long waiting lists for several of these programs, including Salt Lake County's Caregiver Support Services.

Utah's boomer stats are daunting: In Utah, the number of residents 65 and older will increase 51 percent from 2010 to 2020. In 2028, just 20 years from now, a Utahn will turn 75 every 22 minutes. By 2038, 25 percent of the population of Salt Lake County will be over 60 years old. The fastest growth is among people 85 and older. By 2050, it's predicted, there will be 103,000 in that age group in Salt Lake County alone.

At the same time, because the fertility rate has declined, there will be fewer adult children to take care of each aging parent. More single women have arrived at old age without children to take care of them. While need increases, the number of women between the ages of 25 and 54 — the average age of paid caregivers, the majority of whom are female — will remain flat.