American society may or may not be getting wiser. But it’s certainly getting older as a whole. The 2022 U.S. Census has revealed that the median age of Americans went up by 0.2 years from a then-record high of 38.7 years in 2021 up to a new record high 38.9 years in 2022. That means that about half the 334.2 million or so people in the U.S. are older than Facebook co-founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, the movie Cujo, and Hasbro’s Glo Worms, who are all about 39 years of age, not that the three are related. And about half are younger. The question then is whether all of this is a good thing. Well, when it comes to aging, it depends.
Of course, not all states are aging at the same rate or in the same way. There are 50 shades of gray, so to speak. However, all but four states—Alabama, Maine, Tennessee, and West Virginia—in the U.S. and the District of Columbia did experience increases in their median ages from 2021 to 2022. And aloha, Hawaii had the biggest increase of them all, bouncing 0.4 years up to 40.7 in just one year.
Drilling down to the county level revealed that 1,846 or 59% of U.S. counties saw their median ages go up from 2021 to 2022. That’s 8% more than the 1,590 counties that experienced increases from 2020 to 2021. Jasper County, South Carolina, and Blaine County, Idaho, had the biggest increases in median age among counties with populations of 20,000 or greater. In the course of one year, both had increases of one year up to 46.3 years for Jasper County and 45.9 for Blaine County.
If you are wondering which state had the highest median age, your “main” focus should be on the state whose motto is DIRIGO, which is Latin for “I lead.” Yep, Maine led the pack with a median age of 44.8 years. The second highest was the “Live Free or Die” state, New Hampshire, which came in at 43.3. All told, 17 states in the country had median ages older than Nicki Minaj, who turned 40 in 2022.
In 2022, there were seven counties with median ages at or above Tom Cruise’s or Taco Bell’s age, which was 60 years last year. These included Highland County, Virginia (with a median age of 60.0 years), Charlotte County, Florida (60.2), Jefferson County, Washington (60.4), Harding County, New Mexico (60.5), Jeff Davis County, Texas (61.7), Catron County, New Mexico (62.1), and Sumter County, Florida (68.1).
Now, if you are looking for the state or district with the youngest population, look to the state with Bryce, Bryce baby. That’s right, Utah had the youngest median age at 31.9 years. The second youngest median age was the District of Columbia (34.8) but probably not because of the Congresspeople themselves. Carrie Blazina and DrewDeSilva wrote for the Pew Research Center in January that the median age of House of Representatives members was 57.9 years and Senators was 65.3 years, which, Pew, is nearly twice the median age in D.C. Coming in third was Texas with a median age of 35.5 years.
