The Silver Tsunami: Why Many Senior Living Communities are Expanding

August 11th, 2025

Happy senior couple in independent living home at Mennonite Village

Mennonite Village, like many other communities, is expanding. This is not the first new neighborhood we’ve built, nor will it be the last, but why now?

The population of individuals 65 and older has been gradually increasing in the United States since the early 1900s. The average lifespan has increased dramatically from about 47 to 78 years old in the last 125 years, and after World War II, the birth rate also grew. From the years 1946 to 1964, we welcomed the Baby Boomer generation. Today, this is also known as the Silver Tsunami.

According to the U.S. Census, the population of adults 65 and older has grown almost five time faster than the total population in the hundred years between 1920 and 2020. In 1920, the older population made up only 1 in every 20 people versus 1 in 6 people in 2020. Another way to illustrate this is simply the number of adults 65 and older inflating from 4.9 million in 1920 to 55.8 million in 2020. Based on Administration for Community Living’s 2023 Profile on Older Americans, this grew again in 2022 to 57.8 million.

This spike in the older population is also a result of much lower birth rates within younger generations. With the fewer children per family, the need for caregiver and health services is vital. Not to mention the difficulty and strain it puts on a family to be primary caregivers to their relatives. LTC News recently reported that over half of family caregivers use their own savings to pay for in-home care while reducing hours, and therefore wages, to care for elderly family members. It also affects their relationships with spouses, children, and siblings causing rifts in some of their most important connections. Read more here: https://www.ltcnews.com/articles/new-study-exposes-how-caregiving-drains-families-long-term-care-planning

Though the multiplying of 55 and older communities, or additions to them, may seem sudden, researchers, policymakers, and healthcare services alike have been preparing for this for decades. Mennonite Village’s most recent addition was completed in 2020, when we added a new neighborhood of twenty-one Independent homes. This time around we are not only adding thirty duplexes for a total of sixty residences, but we are also building a brand new, state of the art, twenty-four bed memory care facility. This is only the first phase of many to prepare our campus for the incoming wave.

Sources and additional reading:
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/2020-census-united-states-older-population-grew.html
https://acl.gov/sites/default/files/Profile%20of%20OA/ACL_ProfileOlderAmericans2023_508.pdf
https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/055/
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/12/by-2030-all-baby-boomers-will-be-age-65-or-older.html
https://www.ltcnews.com/articles/new-study-exposes-how-caregiving-drains-families-long-term-care-planning
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236099242_The_Aging_Tsunami_Time_for_a_New_Metaphor