Arts may marketers bemoan the aging of its audience, but in the short run, there is a larger market available for audience development populated with aging baby-boomers.
According to the 2010 census, the fastest growing population group was those ages 65 to 69, up by a third from 2000. That group will expand even more rapidly in the decade to come, starting in 2011, as baby boomers begin to turn 65. The Northeast had the largest percentage of people 65 and older, at 14 percent (compared to 13 percent nationally). But the states with the top incremental increases were in the West: Alaska, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado and Arizona helped push the 65 to 69 age cohort up by 23 percent over the decade.
In total, there were 40.3 million people ages 65 and older as of April 2010, a rise of about 15 percent from 2ooo. Seniors grew more rapidly than the 10 percent pace of the nation as a whole. The only age group to experience a decline was that of the 75- to 79-year-olds, reflecting the low number of births during the Great Depression in the 1930s.