America is an aging nation. A recent Education Week article entitled, “In Districts Where Seniors Outnumber Children, Schools Adjust,†points out that “[s]eniors now outnumber students in more than 900 counties across the U.S., and that “seniors outnumber schoolchildren by more than 2-to-1 in 33 counties,†according to recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau. This can have a significant effect on education funding, as senior citizens are statistically more likely to favor lower taxes and cuts in education spending. The same article points out, however, that some of these counties have found ways to minimize this effect by involving the local senior population in the school experience. In a book published several years ago entitled, Gray Dawn: How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform American — And the World, Peter G. Peterson explored not only these implications in the U.S. but also aging trends worldwide.
