AUGUSTA – When Ted Sanders and his wife started talking about where to retire, they considered the Caribbean. They both enjoy being near the ocean and had spent vacations on the islands before.

Then, in 1995, the couple traveled from their former home outside of Philadelphia to Maine to visit a son. On a brilliant October morning, they went to Reid State Park and watched the waves crash against the shore.

“We can stop looking,” Sanders recalled saying to his wife, Toby, who agreed they had found the right place to move. Have they regretted the decision? “Not for a minute,” said Ted Sanders, who is 68.

State officials are looking for more people like the Sanderses, seeing them as a potential boon for the economy and a human asset for communities where they settle.

A two-day conference focusing on the subject, co-sponsored by independent Gov. Angus King and former Democratic Gov. Kenneth Curtis, begins today at the Augusta Civic Center.

Announcing the conference in his office recently with Curtis, King succinctly summed up the benefits of building a retirement industry.

“Retirees,” King said, “can be a very significant economic force.”

Maine has a reputation for high taxes and long, cold winters. Notions like those have nourished an assumption that retirees leaving the state vastly outnumber those who choose to stay.

But state officials, after examining income tax records of more affluent retirees, discovered quite the opposite: Twice as many retirees are moving in as are moving out.

A separate study by John Donahue and Herman Leonard of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government concluded tax concerns are not a big a factor for seniors when they decide whether to retire in Maine.

Ted Sanders, who practiced behavioral medicine in downtown Philadelphia hospitals, said taxes were just one factor of many he and his wife considered. Finding a home within relatively easy reach of their six children was a major interest.

The Sanderses also were drawn by the small-town, seaside atmosphere in Brunswick, and have found with delight they are still within an easy shot of the state theater and symphony in Portland. And they like Maine people.

Maine is, after all, a state of older people. Fresh census figures show Mainers’ median age increased by nearly five years to 38.6 during the decade leading up to 2000. That makes Maine’s population the fourth-oldest in the nation.

Mainers who are 65 and older represent 14.4 percent of the state’s population, the census showed, and by the year 2020 the senior bloc is expected to balloon to nearly 20 percent.

King called for a study of the retirement industry when he presented his economic strategy for Maine in 1996. The following year, a report called “Golden Opportunity” listed benefits of making Maine attractive to retirees.

A “Golden Opportunity II” report, a follow-up to the 1997 version, put it this way: “The Baby Boomers have long been in the driver’s seat of the U.S. economy and are surely not planning to turn over the wheel in their retirement.”

The report cites ripple effects of having retirees settle in Maine, pointing to figures showing that every retiree’s household has the equivalent economic effect of 3.7 factory jobs.

On top of that, retirees don’t send kids to school, saving the state and local governments education costs. And, as the “Golden Opportunity” report points out, retirees don’t just sit in rockers and knit booties.

With people now living 63 percent longer than their grandparents, retirees provide a rich source of life experience and knowledge for schools and civic groups, offer a myriad of volunteer services and fill local government posts.

Dave Reinke, a Michigan native who came to Maine in 1984 to direct the Maine Education Association, retired in 1993 and decided to stay. He now finds himself behind a desk again as interim president of Patriot Mutual Insurance Co. in Portland. In Hallowell, where he lives, Reinke serves on the tree board.

Like Sanders, Reinke found Maine’s people to be a big attraction, but he was also drawn by the opportunities for boating, fishing and other outdoor activities.

Given those and other pluses, the “Golden Opportunity” study recommends a marketing effort, starting at a cost of $100,000 per year, to attract and retain retirees in Maine. Any promotional material, it says, should stress Maine’s low crime rate.