Last August the Cyrus family turned its back on the Bangor area and moved to southern New Hampshire.

The family of four opted for more cultural activities, higher-paying jobs and bigger schools. Despite trade-offs, the Boston area beckoned with advantages, outstripping any lingering doubts the family shouldn’t sell its house in Veazie and move to Hampton.

“It’s very isolated up there and it’s a long way from anywhere,” 38-year-old Joanna Cyrus said this week.

While family members do miss the slower pace of life and old friends, husband Tony, a Brewer native, now makes by himself what they both earned in Maine as high school music teachers, Joanna said. And their sons Christopher, 6, and Jonathan, 9, are benefiting from a region thick with cultural events.

Joanna, who along with her husband performed for more than a decade in the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, has found new opportunities as well. She has a growing number of requests from musical groups in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The Cyruses are like thousands of other Maine families that have been drawn or forced toward opportunities elsewhere. According to Census 2000 data released this week, families with parents in their 20s and 30s are leaving Maine in droves. For example, the number of 25- to 34-year-olds dropped a stunning 30 percent from 1990 to 2000, compared to a single-digit decline nationally.

As they leave, they take their young children. And those of childbearing age who stay have the lowest fertility rate in the nation.

Consequently, the number of Maine children age 4 or younger plummeted 21 percent over the last decade. The drop was just 4 percent nationally.

This, and the aging of the baby-boom generation, has made Maine the fourth oldest state in the nation.

In 10 years, the state’s median age has moved from 33.9 years to 38.6 years. That’s a jump of five years compared to the national median, which went from 32.9 years to 35.3 years.

As the least racially diverse state in the nation, Maine also doesn’t get many immigrants from other countries seeking job opportunities. Typically, immigrants are younger people seeking good jobs and communities where they can raise families.

All of this bodes poorly for the state’s economy. When the baby boom population is fully retired, there will be even fewer people holding jobs.

“Because Maine has an older population and fewer minorities, the baby boomers are a larger share of the population,” said Richard Sherwood, a state demographics expert.

Maine saw an out-migration of the young from 1860 to 1960, as opportunities out West beckoned, Sherwood said.

With the back-to-the-land movement in the 1970s, many younger people moved to Maine to try subsistence farming. By the 1980 census, that trend had helped Maine achieve its first double-digit population increase in 130 years.

But demographers expect aging trends are here to stay, with Maine leading most other states.

The changing age structure is already having an effect, said Charles Colgan, professor of public policy at the University of Southern Maine. Across the state, school buildings are being retrofitted into elderly housing, he said.

“This is the leading edge of the transformation from a youth-dominated culture of the last 50 plus years to an aged culture of the next 50 plus years,” Colgan said.

The debate about how to deal with prescription drug prices is another signal.

State officials have been talking for years about the aging of Maine and about its consequences. State Economist Laurie Lachance has talked about the “dependency ratio” – the number of persons under 18 and over 65 per 100 persons of working age. As the ratio increases, she predicts it will have dire public policy implications.

The trends lead to questions about how to pay for continuing medical care for the elderly with fewer people in the work force and about how to find workers.

Colgan said he expects more attention will be paid to how the state can improve its population mix by attracting and retaining the young.

“We’re going to see multiple solutions proposed,” he said. Colgan suspects early proposals will be dominated by policy-makers trotting out pet economic projects.

One thing he would do is eliminate the tuition differential Maine’s public universities charge out-of-state residents. The policy discourages people from outside the state, and underscores the notion that people from out of state should go away.

Department of Human Services Commissioner Kevin Concannon oversees many state programs that help the elderly. He sees the biggest obstacle to attracting the young as a lack of opportunity.

Computer whizzes go to Seattle or San Francisco, and those in other careers go to the places that offer future growth, he said.

At the same time, senior-level jobs at home in careers like banking have dried up. Corporate consolidations have moved executive jobs to headquarters elsewhere, he said.

Concannon thinks the state is in a good position to use federal money to provide services for the new wave of elderly.

Maine sees $1 billion of its $1.4 billion Medicaid expenditure covered. It gets $88 million in federal food stamp money, which enriches local grocers.

Concannon made his observations via telephone Wednesday during a break at a summit meeting organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on developing strategies to deal with an aging population.

He said a crucial step for the good of Maine is to develop a healthier population. Mainers who stop smoking, eat properly and exercise will enjoy better, more productive lives. That change, combined with access to prescription drugs, will result in a healthier economy, he said.

Concannon said his family has been touched by the trends identified in the census as much as anyone. His three sons were once all located out of state. While one has come back, the others haven’t found opportunities here.

“I think they’d all like to come back,” he said.

But Mainers in exile aren’t likely to be able to move back easily, if current trends continue. And those here sometimes are forced to leave, like the Kurings of Hampden. They were packing this week in preparation for a move to Schenectady, N. Y.

Sherry and Stephen Kuring were preparing to take their 2- and 4-year-old children after having enjoyed life in Maine for little more than a year.

“We really do love it here,” said Sherry, who is 37.

But when General Electric Corp. reassigned her husband, the family didn’t have to think long about what they’d do, because there were few alternative options.

“One of the problems here in the area is that there wouldn’t have been a position that he could have taken,” Sherry complained.

The couple has moved three times in six years, but hasn’t been drawn in the same way to previous residences in Kentucky and southern California.

Sherry said that Maine is not only a good place for kids, but also it isn’t as tainted by some of the materialism seen elsewhere.

“The car you drive isn’t 50 percent of your personality here,” she said.

Maine will soon be in the Kurings’ rear-view mirror. Sherry said she and her husband would now have to wait until retirement to consider a return – at a time when a job won’t be a concern.