Pub. 3 2018 Issue 4

15 ISSUE 4 2018 When you divide the number of people who are older than 65 by the number of people who are of working age between 25 and 64, the ratio is getting bigger by the year because there are more and more seniors and fewer young people to replace them. Most immigrants are between 20 and 40; only a small percentage of immigrants are 65 or older. As the median age of the U.S. population goes up, in other words, immigration provides a counterbalance. You might already know that there are now more millennials than baby boomers (in 2015, there were approximately 75.4 million millennials versus 74.9 million baby boomers); what you probably don’t know is that the boomer generation is disappearing fast, so that the numbers for boomers will be less than the numbers for generation X as early as 2028. It is important that a significant number of the millennials are immigrants. Even more important, though, is the fact that we need them to help support the aging U.S. population. Experts think U.S. residents will need new housing because of increases in the population and because some existing homes will fall out of use as a result of destruction or deteri- oration. Where are people supposed to live as the size of the population increases? Experts know they are going to have to live somewhere. The question is, where? High-density, multifamily housing is the most sensible an- swer to that question. Some people refer to it as “workforce housing” because it can provide an affordable, middle-class life for people in the following professions: • Firefighters • Health care workers • Police officers • Public employees • Teachers In addition to being less expensive and more efficient in terms of organizing resources such as transportation and retail for maximum benefit, multifamily housing also makes sense because the number of people in any given household has become smaller as well.