Aging Maine

Mainers who want to know what issues are likely to dominate political debate here over the next decade need merely look at the most recent edition of the Maine Policy Review and the article, “Whither Maine’s Population.” It is a compelling outline of changes lawmakers and the public should anticipate.

“Whither” pretty much describes the problem with Maine’s population. It is withering and aging faster than the rest of the nation, with profound implications for the state. Consider, Maine’s birth rate is as low as it has been in the 140 years of record keeping. Six of Maine’s 16 counties had net population losses during 1990-98. In ’97, seven counties — Aroostook, Hancock, Knox, Lincoln, Oxford, Piscataquis and Washington — “saw the number of deaths equal or exceed the number of births,” according to the review article. In-migration in Maine lags behind the national average. Its population is now fourth oldest in the nation, up from 12th just a few years ago, and the number of school-age children has begun to fall significantly.

The authors of the article, UMaine Associate Professor Deirdre M. Mageean, Gillian AvRuskin, a UMaine graduate student, and Richard Sherwood of the State Planning Office, consider how population changes affect everything from school consolidation to elderly care. An excerpt of their work appears on today’s Op-Ed Page. It focuses on the effect of an aging population on Maine’s labor market and its ability to grow economically.

The King administration already has recognized that, without sufficient numbers of young adults coming into the workforce, expanding Maine’s economy means retraining the workers it has. So, for instance, it has proposed expanding adult education and has supported expansions of the technical colleges. The State Planning Office is looking for ways to attract retirees to the state — either to enjoy themselves in Maine’s beautiful environment, or to get back to work. The state is wondering how it can attract older teachers, particularly in science, to come to Maine and teach for another few years. Military retirees are especially desirable, the SPO concludes, because they retire relatively young, are very well trained and are highly mobile.

But there is much more to the aging of Maine than just its workforce productivity. More pressing might be how this rural, poor state will care for a disproportionate number of elderly residents. Where will medical specialists and allied health professionals come from to serve this population and how will those services be delivered to rural areas? Maine’s population is spread out and not all elderly can or should drive — how will they get about?

While being fairly certain about the number of births and deaths predicted for Maine, the authors of the article are more cautious about migration trends, which are strongly influenced by economic conditions. They also have been influenced, from the beginning, by government policy — the 17th century settlements along Maine’s coast, for instance, or the 19th century colony of 50 Swedes, who organized first a plantation, then the town of New Sweden and eventually attracted more than 3,000 Swedish immigrants to Maine.

Legislators probably aren’t ready to start looking to other nations to solve Maine’s population problems, but they ought to be ready to address serious concerns about how the changing demographics in Maine affect education, health care, transportation and economic expansion. The Maine Policy Review is available through the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy at the University of Maine.