The growing number of both the babyboomers and their baby boomlet grandchildren could prove to be a huge problem for K-12 public education funding across the United States.
A new report released this week by the Foundation for Excellence in Education and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice details the very real impact population growth will have on national and state public service budgets in the future.
When baby boomers leave the workforce and retire, they dont contribute to government revenues -- and their demands on government expenditures increase. But pressure increases on the working population to pay for these expenditures as the number of retirees keeps climbing.
The report used an age dependency ratio to measure societal strain. The ratio adds people who are old enough to exit the workforce and retire with those too young to have entered it -- it then divides the sum by the number of working-age people.
High total age dependency ratios lead to slower economic and tax revenue growth while creating higher demands for public health and education spending.
Over time, the Census Bureau projects these ratios will increase in all 50 states, including Florida, where the state is projected to see an increase of 4.3 million residents over the age of 65 by 2030. On top of that, the Sunshine State will have an additional 1.2 million school-age children at the same time.
In 2010, the age-dependency ratio in the state was 63 percent -- which means there are 63 people receiving elderly services for every 100 working to pay for them. By 2030, that figure is projected to climb to 89 percent, the third-highest rate in the country behind Nevada and Arizona.
A state like Florida is pretty dramatically going to have both of these things occurring at the same time, Patricia Levesque, executive director of the foundation explained. What that means for Florida in particular is that we will have a shrinking workforce that is actually paying and working to provide the resources for government then to provide health care and education services.
To best equip the working generation for a growing pressure to support public funding, Levesque and Matthew Ladner, Ph.D., who wrote the report, say the nations education system needs some big improvements.
Florida has got to focus on improving the education of the kids in our system because they will be the workers -- part of those 100 people paying for the services of the 89 people, said Levesque. Making sure we are paying attention and improving the quality of education right now is really important because that is the workforce of 2030 that's going to support a growing need for health care and education services.
We need to get very serious about maximizing any and all [education reforms] because the clock is literally ticking, said Ladner.
One of the most cost-effective ways to improve education is through school choice, education savings accounts and digital learning. Promoting outcome-based funding, or rewarding teachers and schools for academic success, is another way the report says policymakers can improve education nationwide.
We have to just be that much more committed to continue to go down the path of these improvements that were making in education, said Levesque. We cant just sit back and say Weve done so much, lets just give it a rest What I hope policymakers take from this report is the fact that we have to continue to move forward because there is so much our state is going to face in the very near future.
Reach Tampa-based reporter Allison Nielsen by email atallison@sunshinestatenews.comor follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
