Oct 7 (Reuters) - Florida just isn't what it used to be for retirees.
Meet Patti Keagy, an American Baby Boomer, who is looking at other possible retirement destinations.
"My mother says her generation and other people that she knew made a mistake. They sold everything and they moved down to Florida," said Keagy, a resident of a Boston suburb.
The 55- to 64-year-old population in some fast-growing suburban counties around cities such as Denver and Atlanta more than doubled from 2000 to 2010, according to 2010 Census data out today.
The surge in older residents is in three distinct clusters, according to demographic profiles released so far on 37 states and the District of Columbia:
THE VILLAGES — She is around 67.8 years of age, and the numbers of her demographic the past 10 years grew proportionally faster in The Villages than those of her male counterpart. Meet Heide Eide and her fun Village of Largo friends and neighbors — Jane Gracan, Carmela D’Aloisio and Susan Sarlo — the face of The Villages, newly released 2010 census data suggests. At age 67, Eide fits perfectly into the median age bracket for women in The Villages Census Designated Place, the U.S. Census Bureau announced this morning in an embargoed information release.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.— Three renowned economists agree Florida's boom days are over and that the state's recovery from the recession is likely to take awhile.
Economist Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute said Thursday that Florida is one of the states facing difficulty going forward following a 20-month national recession that wreaked "an astonishing period of economic misery."
Hassett told lawmakers that even if the recession was declared over in August, the risk of calamity remains.
"Gloomy," state Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, said afterward. "What to do?"
Your correspondent believes demographics is destiny.
An easy thing to believe in Florida. A place where population growth -- or its sudden reversal -- can explain almost everything we do. At least those things that are explainable. Not everything is, you know.
So when the U.S. Census Bureau released a compilation of Baby Boomer statistics the other week, he took notice. Boomers are people born during the population burst between 1946-1964.
