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If anybody was curious, the states that already had this prior to 2020 are:

Maine, Vermont, and Florida

Since 2020: Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and West Virginia now also qualify.

Montana is a bit of a surprise there... so is Oregon for me.

Source: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/older-ad...

I'm from the west coast and oregon has always seemed to have large populations of retirees in the more rural areas. My grandparents considered moving there when I was young. Also seems that oregon has a large "self-selecting" population where folks move there from out-of-state
This is exactly what I was wondering, thank you! They kept saying 11 states already have this, but I couldn't figure out which 11.
Let’s consider this logically:

What kind of people will not wanting children likely select for?

At least two kinds come to mind:

1) People who love children and are willing to have them regardless of the impact on their financial situation.

2) People living in societies where women (and likely some men) lack a say in whether or not to have children.

The first kind could be very good.

The second is definitely not something we should look forward to.

Opinions aren't genetic, so that's not very good logic. I guess the logic depends on a culture passing on a value - by means of words, not by genetics - such as spawn furiously to the next generation, who accept it uncritically. That would be a version of (2) I guess: mindless reproduction along with hostility to thinking about it, with memes as the mechanism. This memetic condition would tend to win, you'd think, except somehow it hasn't won already, and we are still somewhat mentally capable of considering our reproductive options. Perhaps having children thoughtfully is the only effective way, and so it must necessarily be by choice.
If things don't change, those in power in the US will succeed in making the second a reality.

There is a "replacement" crisis but it's being addressed by pearl clutching and those advocating for forced birth.

Having children is expensive all the way around. And women's reproductive rights have enabled them to (rightfully) make their own choices about motherhood.

To state the obvious: children literally are the future of humanity and we need to address the issue accordingly. A lot of it would be via changing the economics of having a child, and the rest would be by making the world a "village to raise a child".

This is all eminently doable. We just need to agree on what that looks like and how to best invest in it.

In the US, despite the .fr domain.
US's birth rate are actually way higher than Europe and China, not as high as Africa, but still better than most other areas in the world.
It's already true in France. Over 65s are 22.5% of the population and under 18s are 17%. And the difference is rapidly widening.
So a lot of problems will be solved by 2049 (overpopulation) and probably many others will arise (we never had worldwide decreasing demographics.)
Overpopulation is not a problem.

Maybe in a couple countries. But not for the world, and not for the west and definitely not for America.

As the population has grown poverty has decreased.

Population is not the primary problem.

Some people have a massive ecological footprint. For instance, somebody who uses a private jet ~daily.

Other people have a negative ecological footprint: their actions either actively improve the ecology of the world or act to reduce the ecological footprint of others.

The difference between the two is many orders of magnitude. A world-wide population of 100 million daily private jet users likely has a larger ecological impact than 10 billion low-impact humans.

Population change takes decades or centuries for the ecological impact to happen.

Shifts in the ecological footprint of significant populations can cause shifts over a small number of years.

Overpopulation is not solved. Many African and Middle Eastern cultures continue to have half a dozen children per wife.
Median age in Africa is 19.5 years.

Africa doubled it's population in the last 28 years.

> the arithmetic that supports those programs tightens, all else equal

We can tax the rich, we're post scarcity, time to take a look at the rest of the world an come up with a better social safety net.

I agree that the ultra-rich living on permanent fake debt backed by their stocks / real estate need to contribute more, but I'm tired of seeing people throw "we can tax the rich" as a panacea.

Productivity is growing much more slowly than the retiree-to-worker ratio. Workers are producing slightly more every year, but there are a lot more retirees to take care of every year. If this does not change, we will eventually see a collapse of social safety nets. Policy can only accelerate or delay that collapse.

The real problem aging societies face is not a shortage of money but a shortage of people.
Pray tell, what do you mean by "the rest of the world"? Surely it's not Western Europe, which is already being strangled by the cost of the welfare state?
We should probably spend some time making sure that _existing_ taxes are being used efficiently before we start funneling in even more.
Why would I want to turn the country at the forefront of technology and innovation into a stagnating socialist welfare state like the countries you are holding up as role models?
Our expanding economies and improving quality of life depend on young people and a growing population. So it brings up an interesting question.

In 20 years, will countries start to compete for young people? Tax breaks, benefits, etc. Will some countries thrive while others die off completely? The proportion of young people will be a huge issue regarding military strength, innovation, etc.

Could get very ugly.

Yes, but the inverse implication of countries heavily competing is that young people will be severely restricted from leaving as well. An incredibly underrated future possibility is that it becomes much harder to get a passport.
That’s very idealistic opinion. The reality is that for example German government does everything for retirees and their votes. Young people as a minority are successfully ignored.
So what?

Improving healthcare and medicine should be one of the core goals of civilization, so eventually we should have healthcare good enough to enable "practical immortality": No "aging" and no deaths save in extreme cases or physical accidents/violence.

In an ideal future, the majority of humans SHOULD be all over 100 years old! and hale and healthy as a 30 year old.

The problem is not "how long most people have been alive", maybe the problem is our unwillingness to reassess social assumptions established >2000 years ago:

That everyone has to "work", everyone has to "earn", everyone has to constantly "buy", and that everyone has to constantly pump out babies so they can also keep doing the same...

This has to slow stock market growth, right? Less young people buying, more older people selling.
Yes. A massive implosion in aggregate consumer demand due to shrinking population will hit real estate, stocks, tax revenue, and therefore the ability to meet debt repayment obligations.

Frustratingly, (and counterintuitively), it won't help housing prices, because shrinking populations retreat to city centers. Spain, Italy, Japan, and Korea are full of $5,000 houses. Meanwhile, Madrid, Rome, Tokyo, and Seoul are more expensive than they've ever been.

Most stock market trades aren't made by people, but by institutional money. That ain't going nowhere.
We're on the path to putting Augustine's City of God theory of population to the test.
what's that theory?
Humankind obviously will not die, it will adapt through various ways. Eg health services for elderly will be needed and inheritance will play an increased role as a single person will inherit multiple ancestors.
Adults born before computers, the public internet and the later appearance of so-called "tech" companies on the internet, will outnumber those born after computers, the internet and so-called "tech" company intermediaries
In the US, not the world
I think it’s time to bite the bullet and raise the retirement^W elder benefits eligibility age and peg it to life expectancy at birth minus 15 years or some structure like that. It’s fine that my generation will have to eat the loss - having paid for the past one but not benefiting as much from the coming ones. Some generation has to, and better us than them.

As we get better at healthcare and life, we should expect to be productive and care for ourselves for longer. I hope that as I age I remain in favour of succeeding generations over my own self. Plant the tree whose shade we won’t see etc.

> peg it to life expectancy at birth minus 15 years

That would lower the retirement age for me. I was born in the mid-80s.

I know that was just a suggestion. We could go with something like "life expectancy at birth minus 5 years", which would raise the retirement age for me, but we're basically just admitting that retirement isn't a thing anymore if we do that. Hopefully the wealthiest nation on Earth can do better.

I think, whatever we do, we should recognize that the current retired generation holds more wealth than any other generation. If we want more kids in our society, maybe we need to get some of that wealth into the hands of people who can have more kids.

We should establish UBI and universal health care, not tied to age, and then the concept of "retirement age" can go away.
What even is retirement age and what practical impact would changing it have on society? People can retire or keep working at whatever age they want as long as they can afford to
Sounds like the who age verification debate will just solve itself. Just wait until there aren't any more children and then we don't need to worry about protecting them.
This will have significant consequences for the military.
It'll be fine, Nick will pay for it.
GOOD. We’ve done well to keep everyone alive. All that’s left is to implement sensible economic policies that allow normal folk to start families
It's so frustrating that Social Security reform became the "are you a good progressive?" litmus test in the early 00s. We've had our wages tithed for our whole lives - money that would be actually worth something in retirement if invested - to go into a Ponzi scheme that will go bust before we're retirement age. You could see it coming decades away, and political infighting ensured nothing would be done about it until the discourse tired and started arguing about pronouns instead.
Western society is limping forward with a "yes, but me first" mentality.

We absolutely need an abundance agenda if we want people to have children. Reject the zero-sum investment thesis of NIMBY protectionism. Invest in density, efficiency, and antitrust. This is one of the most openly obvious self-owns in history. It's genuinely absurd.

We are all in this together. Make financial security easy for young people and we'll actually get children.

...in the US
>As the ratio of working-age adults (18–64) to older adults falls from about 3.4 today toward roughly 2.4 by 2060, the arithmetic that supports those programs tightens, all else equal. On this reading, the chart is an argument for some combination of higher productivity, longer working lives, higher fertility, or higher immigration to widen the working-age base.

Or spend less.

Keep building these bike lanes and 15-minute neighborhoods. So that people don't even think about having children. Make sure people have no personal space and no personal time.

That's how we reduce the Earth's population!