Declining number of kids in wa

The Villages, Fla., known as the largest retirement community in the world, has become famous as one of the most Republican places in the U.S.

In that regard, it couldn’t be more different from quaint Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula, which stands out as one of the most liberal places in very liberal Western Washington.By Gene Balk Seattle Times

Residents of The Villages and Port Townsend have something in common. New census data shows they rank No. 1 and No. 2 as the oldest in the nation.

To be fair, The Villages is in a league of its own. Its metro area has a median age of 68 — nowhere else comes close. Port Townsend is considered a “micropolitan” area by the Census Bureau, which is a smaller population center than a metropolitan area. In 2023, the Port Townsend micropolitan area, which includes only Jefferson County, had a median age of 60.8.

Port Townsend has gotten older each year since the 2020 census, and it passed the 60-year median mark in 2022.

While this aging trend is more extreme in Port Townsend, we’re seeing it across most of the state: The number of children in Washington is declining while the number of people 65 and older is increasing.

There are 21 metropolitan and micropolitan areas wholly in Washington. In 17 of these, the under-18 population fell between 2020 and 2023.

In this period, the number of children statewide fell by 3%, or about 50,000. In 2023, there were about 1.65 million people under 18 in Washington.

The sharpest declines in the number of children were in the Puget Sound region. The under-18 population in the Oak Harbor micropolitan area, which includes Island County, fell by 7.5% from 2020 to 2023. Next was Port Townsend, at 6.5%, followed by the Bremerton area (Kitsap County) at 5%.

The number of children in the Seattle metro area, which includes King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, fell by 3.6%, which represents a decline of more than 31,000 kids.

In King County alone, though, the number of kids fell by 5%, more than twice the rate of decline in both Pierce and Snohomish. In February, I wrote about census data showing King County experienced a decline in the number of kids from 2020 to 2022. The new census data shows this trend has continued.

There are larger societal trends at play contributing to this decline. Americans are getting married later, if at all, and an increasing share of adults are childless and do not expect to have children.

But such a significant drop in the number of children over a brief three-year period seems to suggest an increasing number of families with children are leaving, and are not being replaced by new arrivals. The higher-than-average cost of living in many parts of Washington is the most obvious possible reason.

There are still metro areas — many of them in the South, where housing costs are lower — that are drawing families with children, and where the under-18 population is growing.

In Washington, four micropolitan areas gained kids from 2020 to 2023. Centralia (Lewis County) had the biggest increase at 4.1%, followed by Pullman (Whitman County), Shelton (Mason County) and Ellensburg (Kittitas County).

While the number of kids in Washington is shrinking, the population of older adults is ballooning. From 2020 to 2023, Washington’s 65-and-older population increased by nearly 11%, or about 128,000, hitting 1.34 million.

The biggest increase in the number of 65-and-older people was in the Ellensburg area (Kittitas County), with a 15% increase in the three-year period. In the Seattle metro area, the number increased by nearly 11%.

This increase is largely driven by the state’s resident baby boomers, thousands of whom celebrate their 65th birthday each year.