Majority of Pa. counties projected to lose population by 2050. Rural areas bear the brunt.

The number of Pennsylvanians old enough to retire will outnumber those who are 20 and under in the next five years. By 2035, the retirement-age population will reach its peak.

A report by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania projects that the continued graying of the Baby Boomer generation, paired with declining birth rates, will create or exacerbate myriad social and economic issues — from housing and health care to transportation and education — that will disproportionately affect rural areas of Pennsylvania over the coming three decades.

"We have smaller families now, so we simply have fewer young people in the pipeline, and we have an increasingly older population," said Kyle Kopko, executive director of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, a nonpartisan research arm of the General Assembly. "We're going to have 600,000 more senior citizens by the end of this decade than what we currently do. Not to sound morbid, but they're going to age out. They're going to pass away."

"One of the first comments we heard is that, looking at these numbers, there's two ways to look at them. One way is that they're scary," said state Sen. Gene Yaw, R-23rd Dist., who chairs the Center for Rural Pennsylvania's board of directors. "The other one is that there's a lot of opportunity here."

Kopko called the report "among our most important research that we've conducted in recent years."

The challenges outlined in it, he said, demand a sense of urgency from elected officials at all levels of government.

"I think that particularly local leaders need to think about these trends and what they mean for their community," he said. "Everyone should try to take responsibility for it. This is a 30-year phenomenon, but don't view this as, oh, you know, I can just focus on the here-and-now and let this flounder for another five years and we'll get to it later. If everyone starts to think about this immediately and how that relates to their day-to-day policy work, either as a township supervisor or a county commissioner, school district director, you name it, I think that will help them to realize what the challenges are that lie ahead."

The report cites a general "divergence of populations in rural and urban counties," noting that urban areas of the state, especially the Philadelphia region, will grow just enough through 2050 to offset widespread population declines in rural areas.

To illustrate this growing divide, Yaw said that if you take an outline of his district, which is 4,380 square miles and accounts for 10% of the state's footprint, and superimpose it over the Philadelphia area, it would cover 21 other Senate districts.

But it's much more complicated than an urban versus rural problem.

Each region of the state has its own unique set of challenges, Kopko said, so there's no applicable one-size-fits-all approach.

"We have to really consider this almost on a case-by-case basis throughout the state, just given the nature of counties," he said.

What the map says about Pennsylvania's future

Using U.S. Census Bureau data and other information, the Center projects that Pennsylvania's population will remain relatively stagnant by the middle of the century, growing just 1.6%, or by more than 200,000 people — about enough to fill Penn State's Beaver Stadium twice over.

Most of the growth would occur between 2030 and 2040, with losses coming thereafter.

The report forecasts 1% growth by the end of this decade, but new U.S. Census Bureau population estimates show that Pennsylvania has already lost 0.3% of its population between 2020 and 2023, according to American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. It's one of 14 states to have seen a decline.

"If we're already heading in the wrong direction, that's even more concerning," Kopko said.

In all, 21 counties will grow and 46 will shrink in population, with 10 counties among them seeing little change in either direction.

Eight of the 10 counties in southeastern Pennsylvania — Philadelphia and its collar counties — will grow, with the exception of Bucks and Northampton counties.

Heading west from the Philadelphia region, five of the 12 counties that make up the southcentral area of the state — York, Franklin, Cumberland, Juniata and Mifflin — will also expand, as will Union, Clinton and Centre counties in the northcentral region and Luzerne and Lackawanna counties in the northeast.

But the rest of the state will see sharp population losses in most cases, with only a few exceptions. Erie County, for example, is the only county along the entire northern border with New York and the western border with Ohio that will see an increase, but an insignificant one at that — just 0.3%.

More: Erie County facing a 'silver tsunami' as population ages; caregivers in short supply

Only one other county in western Pennsylvania will grow: Indiana County, 11% by 2050.

Kopko said the growth of Indiana and Centre counties is in large part due to their being home to large, growing universities. The same is true for Union County (Bucknell University) and Clinton County (Lock Haven University). All four counties are considered rural based on their population density.

"Indiana County has been on the decline for a number of years, but IUP (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) is also expanding," he said. "They're going to have a new medical college there. Union County, for example, has multiple prisons, and Bucknell is also up that way. Whenever you look at the population pyramid graph, you see this bulging around like the 14- to 25-year-old age range, but then in subsequent years it doesn't necessarily carry out."

The U.S. Census Bureau refers to them as group quarters, which can include prisons, universities or even military bases.

"It's really important to look at what might be driving that (growth)," Kopko continued. "If they're college students, they're probably not employed full-time. They're probably not property owners. There's all those types of considerations, too."

Urban and rural exceptions

The Center for Rural Pennsylvania defines urban and rural counties as those with a population density at or above, or below, 261 people per square mile, respectively. Forty-eight of Pennsylvania's 67 counties are considered rural.

Urban communities will grow 4% by 2050, with rural counties dropping nearly 6%.

There are notable exceptions.

Seven rural counties will buck the trend and see modest growth. In addition to Indiana, Centre, Union and Clinton, the others are Franklin, Juniata and Mifflin counties.

Five urban areas, on the other hand, are expected to see losses, most notably Allegheny County, home of the city of Pittsburgh, as well as the collar counties of Beaver and Westmoreland. Bucks and Northampton counties in the east won't see the spillover from Philadelphia's sizeable gains.

Challenges in Pennsylvania's near future

The most pressing concern will be how to support this growing aging population. For rural areas, the report says that workforce needs for senior care will be significant compared to urban areas.

In fact, one of the in-state migration trends that researchers are finding is among females, who have a greater life expectancy than their male counterparts. As they age, they could relocate to more urban areas, where there is better access to senior care, if rural communities don't address these needs, Kopko said.

Not only will there be a lack of workers needed to support this aging population, there will also continue to be a shortfall of people to backfill their current places in the workforce.

The ramifications run the gamut, from shrinking tax bases that place a larger burden on fewer people, to declining school enrollments that don't warrant as many facilities or even districts than there are currently, to the transportation challenges of getting qualified workers in urban areas to jobs in rural communities and vice versa.

And then there's the state's influence in the federal government. Yaw noted that even with a small uptick statewide, Pennsylvania isn't likely to keep pace with other burgeoning areas of the country, like Florida and Texas, which will not only mean even fewer seats in Congress but also less impact on presidential elections.

To attract and retain younger people, Yaw said Pennsylvania must focus on expanding broadband internet to rural areas to support remote learning, remote work and to attract new businesses; improve the housing stock of smaller communities; better promote Pennsylvania's diverse energy sector; and make tax policy changes, particularly to the corporate net income tax and the franchise tax

State Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-49th Dist., of Erie County, who chairs the Senate Republican Majority Policy Committee, noted there's already one area of tax policy where the Keystone State holds an advantage: Unlike several other neighboring states, Pennsylvania does not tax retirement income. He cited a recent U.S. News & World Report ranking of the "Best Places to Retire in the U.S. in 2024" and noted that seven of the top 10 places, including each of the top five, were Pennsylvania cities.

But even with such a retirement-friendly policy there are consequences, he said.

"We're one of the few states that doesn't have a tax on your retirement earnings," Laughlin said. "It makes it more attractive for older people to either stay here or move here for tax purposes, but it burdens the rest of the working-age folks as far as all the service-related stuff that has to be paid for."

Still time to seize opportunities

Both Kopko and Yaw see a silver lining in the cloudy forecast for Pennsylvania's population.

As a legislator, Yaw hopes the report spurs further reform to permitting processes and even grant-making.

"We've got these little townships where they still meet in somebody's home," he said. "They don't have the expertise to write grants. Competitive grants means that it depends on how good the grant writer is."

Kopko said the Center is already working with local communities, school districts and businesses to help them further understand how these challenges will affect them specifically. The Center plans to release additional reports in 2024, and there could be a push to form a commission to further explore the problems and potential solutions.

"I don't want to sound like doom and gloom and that this is all very bad," Kopko said. "We really do have the opportunity to capitalize on a lot of our assets, particularly in rural communities and Pennsylvania overall. When you look at our neighboring states, we have a much better income tax rate, housing costs are cheaper, insurance rates are cheaper. Pennsylvania overall is a pretty diverse state, and not just in terms of its people, but in terms of its geography. We really do have something to offer everyone."

The report has already helped launch a meaningful discussion, Yaw said.

"We've done a lot to bring this issue to the forefront," he said, "and people are talking about it more than they ever had."

Matthew Rink can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: 2050 population report foresees challenges, opportunities for rural PA