They're likely to be gray-haired, healthy and rich

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

There’s a common lament in Catholic circles and it has to do with the number of “gray heads” that show up for church events. A room full of older Catholics is universally understood to be a bad thing, whereas a room full of young people would, presumably, be interpreted as a godsend.

In Catholic politics, the presence or absence of youth is a sign of success or failure. Liberals point to low levels of religious practice among young people to suggest that the church is insufficiently relevant, or that some teachings alienate young audiences, while conservatives adduce the success of more traditional seminaries and religious orders in generating young vocations to argue that the future lies with them.

Such reactions pivot on the common sense assumption that youth equals growth, while old age means decline. Yet given the “through the looking glass” demographic situation in which the world today finds itself, in many ways the exact opposite is the case. In the United States, the current total of 35 million Americans who are 65 or older, according to U.S. Census data, will more than double to 71 million by 2030.

That reality, combined with the sociological fact that the elderly are much more likely to take religion seriously and to practice their faith, suggests that the “graying” of the population -- far from being something to lament -- actually represents a potential “boom cycle” for the churches, if they know how to react.

First, the demographic data.

Fertility rates around the world are declining. While the drop has been most pronounced in Europe and Asia, the tendency is near-universal. From 1960-65 to 2005, the total fertility rate in Tunisia dropped from 7.2 to 2.0, below the level of 2.1 children per woman of childbearing years needed to keep a population stable; in Egypt, from 7.1 to 3.2; Iran, 7.0 to 2.1; Mexico, 7.4 to 2.4; South Korea, 6.2 to 1.25; China, 6.1 to 1.8; India, 6.0 to 3.0; and Cuba 4.2 to 1.5. In the United States, the total fertility rate hovers slightly below replacement. While “population momentum,” referring to the ongoing impact of earlier periods of high fertility, means that the world’s population will continue to grow for the next half-century or so, somewhere in the 21st century it will peak and then begin to decline. How far and how fast remains to be seen, but some contraction is certain.

Demographers call this the “Second Demographic Transition,” referring to an apparently long-term shift to lower global fertility. It’s driven by urbanization, rising education levels for women and greater participation by women in the workforce, the easy availability of contraception and abortion, high levels of divorce, cohabitation outside marriage, and a host of other factors we generally think of as constitutive of modernity.

Among other things, declining fertility drives the median age up. Again, it’s the West where the wave is cresting first. In the United States, the median age was 30 in 1950, but it will reach 41.1 by 2050. In Europe it will be 47.1, and in Japan a staggering 52.3. In addition, life expectancy is rising. According to the United Nations, global life expectancy was 47 years at birth in 1950, rose to 65 in 2000, and will increase to 74 in the year 2050. In short, fewer people are being born, while those presently alive are living longer.

The impact in the United States will be dramatic. Currently, Americans 65 and older represent 12.6 percent of the national population, a figure that will rise to over 19 percent by 2030. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans aged 14 and under presently outnumber those 65 and above by almost two to one, 60.5 million to 34.7. By 2050, that ratio will have swung strongly in the opposite direction. There will be 75.9 million Americans older than 65, as opposed to 59.7 million under 14, meaning the elderly will outnumber the youngest in the country by more than 16 million.

The oldest state in the Union in 2005, according to the Census Bureau, was Maine, which had a median age of 41.2. By 2050, that will be roughly the median age for the entire nation. Within a half-century, America won’t have to remember the Maine; we will be Maine.

Health care strains

Neoconservative critics often deride this “birth dearth” in moral terms, as evidence of the cultural suicide of modernity, the bitter fruit of a “contraceptive mentality.” Those given to realpolitik worry about the implosion of American power, wondering how a graying nation will maintain its defense budget and field armies. Whatever one makes of such analyses, the trends upon which they’re based are real, and at least some of their foreseeable consequences do not require much speculation. Most notably, the aging of the population will place enormous strains on pensions and health care. According to the Congressional Budget Office, under current conditions the cost of Medicare and Medicaid will rise from 4.3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in 2000 to 21 percent in 2050. Unless something changes, those two programs alone will eat up a larger share of the country’s output than the entire federal government does today.

Certainly, the Catholic church will be caught in the same vise. Dioceses and parishes already struggling to fund retirement and health plans will find that things are not going to get any easier. Further, as millions of additional Americans face the burdens of aging without an extended family or social network, parishes will feel increasing pressure to fill the gap, potentially drawing resources away from other ministries.

Yet there’s also an enormous potential upside to this “Grayby Boom” for the church, and for institutional religion generally.

Sociological data shows that the 65-plus group is far and away the most religious segment of the population, both in terms of attitudes and practice. A recent Pew study, for example, concluded that just 27 percent of U.S. adults 18-34 describe themselves as “religious,” as opposed to 47 percent of those 65 and older. (That difference is a barometer of religious intensity, since more young adults than seniors choose the “somewhat religious” option.) A 2006 Baylor University survey found that 18.6 percent of those 18-30 said they have “no religious affiliation,” while the number drops to just 5.4 percent among those aged 65 and up. A U.S. News and World Report/PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly survey in 2002 concluded that 60 percent of those 65 and older attend religious services at least once a week, compared to just 34 percent of those aged 25-34.

Crossing the 65-plus boundary does not, it should be noted, magically make someone religious. Sociologists refer to “Lifetime Stability Theory” to mean that one’s basic worldview generally does not undergo radical variations with age. The current crop of elderly is more likely to be religious in part because that’s how they were raised; it remains to be seen how generations without a similar formation will react. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that someone who is at least marginally open to religion at 35 is likely to be much more so at 65. Sociologist Fr. Andrew Greeley says that an uptick in both prayer and attending religious services begins in the early 30s and builds as people age.

What all this implies is that the graying of the population may generate a “demographic dividend” for churches.

If Catholics in the United States were a perfect mirror of the general population, 25 percent of those 71 million senior citizens in 2030 would be Catholic, meaning 17.75 million people. In fact, however, the Catholic population is younger than average because of the overrepresentation of Hispanics. In 2005, Hispanics were 14.4 percent of the general American population, but, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, they were 39 percent of the Catholic population. Hispanics have a median age of 27, which is fully nine years below the overall national figure of 36. (The median age for whites is almost 40, meaning the typical Hispanic is 13 years younger.) Hispanics also have a higher fertility rate (2.3) than the national average (2.04).

Adjusting for all that, however, still yields roughly 13.3 million American Catholics over 65 by the year 2030, more than double the current total of 6.5 million.

Moreover, declining fertility and rising median ages in Mexico mean that waves of immigrants, which keep the Hispanic population in the United States disproportionately young, will likely ebb sometime in the 21st century. In this country as well, the Hispanic fertility rate is declining; it went from 2.96 in 1990 to 2.73 in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Census Bureau puts the figure at 2.3 for 2004. For some Hispanic subgroups, it’s already below replacement level. Cuban-American women, for example, had a fertility rate of 1.5 in 2000, well below the national average. In the meantime, the Hispanic elderly population is growing. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the share of elders who are Hispanic will rise from 4 percent to 16 percent by 2050, bringing the Hispanic 65-plus population much closer to the Hispanic portion of the overall population. Hence it may take Hispanic Catholics a bit longer to “gray,” but the trend is the same.

A surge of pray-ers

The bottom line is that by 2030, there will be a surge of roughly 6.8 million additional elderly Catholics in the United States, for a total of 13.3 million -- a net “surplus” of 6.8 million more Catholics entering the stage of life where they are most likely to pray, to go to church, to reflect on religious subjects and to be open to a deeper religious commitment.

Improvements in general health mean the elderly can remain active members of the church for much longer periods of time. Three in four persons aged 65-74 in the United States, and two in three of those over 75, say their health is “good to excellent.” They also have the means to contribute financially to the church; the advertising firm Martino and Binzer, which specializes in “mature marketing,” estimates that Americans over 55 possess $1.5 trillion in discretionary funds.

The question is, will the church take advantage of this potential bonanza by reaching out to the elderly population?

On the positive side of the ledger, the vision to do so is largely in place. Pope John Paul II published a moving “Letter to the Elderly” in 1999, which was the United Nations’ “Year of the Elderly.” The pope’s own visible frailty in his later years stirred Catholic consciousness, particularly about the way elderly and infirm people can still make valuable contributions. The U.S. bishops published their own pastoral document in 1999, “The Blessings of Age,” which states: “How the community relates to its older members -- recognizing their presence, encouraging their contributions, responding to their needs and providing appropriate opportunities for spiritual growth -- is a sign of the community’s spiritual health and maturity.” The bishops also state, “Former responses that saw older people solely as the recipients of care are not adequate.”

Unfortunately, very little of this has translated into actual practice at the retail level. To put it bluntly, there’s nothing comparable to “World Youth Day” for older people, no analogous investment of energy and resources to meet the needs of elder Catholics, despite the fact that they represent the fastest-growing segment of the population, and one typically far more open to what the church has to offer.

The U.S. bishops’ conference, for example, has no office that deals with the pastoral needs of older people. Most American dioceses and many parishes employ “youth ministers,” but few have ministers for the elderly. Catholic health care systems and Catholic Charities do a great deal for infirm elders, but there’s relatively little formal attention to building “elder-friendly” parishes and faith communities. Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that parishes are sometimes hesitant even to admit that the congregation is primarily elderly, for fear that it would project an image of flagging energy and decay.

There are all sorts of moral and spiritual reasons why reluctance to embrace the elderly is unfortunate. Setting that aside for the moment, however, it’s also self-defeating. To put this in crassly commercial terms, the 65-plus population represents the most promising “growth market” for the church’s “product,” and in a boom cycle, only a dysfunctional company would fail to adjust its sales and customer service to ride the wave.

Beyond the creation of formal offices and ministries, all this suggests the need for a broad “gray-friendly” consciousness in the church. To offer just one practical example, seminaries these days ought to be encouraging future homilists to slow down in their delivery, since elderly parishioners often struggle to hear when someone is speaking in rapid-fire fashion.

None of this means, of course, that Catholicism ought to abandon the young. For one thing, if young adults sever their ties to the church, any growing spiritual interest as they age is more likely to be directed towards other options.

But the basic point is that far from clucking sadly when gray heads fill the pews, hearts these days ought to gladden. If someone were to dream up a program of outreach to marginal Catholics that drew 6.8 million back into active practice of the faith within a quarter-century, it would be hailed as one of the great evangelical success stories of all time. Today, demographics are to some extent doing the job all by themselves, if the church can summon the imagination to meet them halfway.

In marketing circles, there’s a classic story told about a French bank that concluded that its elderly customers were taking up too much customer service time for relatively small deposits. Since it would be illegal to bar senior citizens, the bank had to find some other means of driving them away. The solution was simplicity itself: They made the stairs into the bank steeper, and one after another, older customers left.

Moral of the story: Given the demographic realities facing the Catholic church, it would be well advised to do everything it can to lower its stairs, both literally and metaphorically.

John L. Allen Jr. is NCR senior correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@ncronline.org.

Sociologist on tomorrow's elderly today If 6.8 million new, highly engaged Catholics were to surge into the American church from a foreign country, many observers would instinctively want to know: What kind of Catholics are they? Will they steer the church in a conservative direction, or a liberal one? Do they accent social action, piety, “gifts of the Spirit,” or what? Since the 65-and-over Catholic population is destined to grow by roughly 6.8 million in the next quarter-century, and that cohort is likely to form a disproportionate number of those who actually show up on Sunday, it’s likewise natural to ask what their ascent might mean for the future “sense of the faithful.” Sociologist Dean Hoge says that at least in terms of basic attitudes, we don’t have to guess. Since someone’s worldview does not vary much through the life cycle, the best way to get a sense of what the burgeoning 65-plus population in 2030 will have on their minds is to look at what 40- and 50-year-olds are saying today, said Hoge, an emeritus professor at The Catholic University of America. Hoge, who specializes in the sociology of religion and values, and who has carried out extensive studies of the American Catholic population, said that in a 2003 survey, when asked to identify the biggest problems facing the church, Catholics aged 40-50 named the sexual abuse crisis, the priest shortage, and the difficulties of engaging young people in the life of the church. While the prominence given to some of those concerns, especially the sexual abuse crisis, may have been influenced by what was in the headlines at the time, Hoge said there’s an underlying “agenda” implied in the response. “These people are ready for a few reforms,” Hoge said. “The laity are ready for a more participatory church.” “They’re not too happy with the institution,” he said. “Though there might be a number of specific points, the bottom line is greater lay involvement.” In that regard, Hoge said, the message from the 40-50 generation, which will become an increasingly active segment of the Catholic population as they become senior citizens, to some extent comes down to: “Please listen to us!” Hoge warned that frustration with what is sometimes perceived as a church that doesn’t listen may actually influence the extent to which tomorrow’s seniors replicate -- or don’t replicate -- the pattern of previous generations of elders of greater involvement in the church. “They’re not as committed as the present-day elderly,” Hoge said. “They will probably be a little less involved, especially if there isn’t more communication, a greater effort to see what people want.” So, will this emphasis on participation and lay empowerment, combined with the rising “gray” tide in the church, create momentum toward reform somewhere down the line? Hoge, never one to speak outside the data, was precise in his response: “Who knows?” -- John L. Allen Jr.

National Catholic Reporter, February 2, 2007