Herbal Health

I want to move to see my grandchildren grow up, to enjoy their development firsthand, not by phoned progress reports. Even though Philadelphia is not far from Providence, our visits are frustratingly infrequent – and just as often, uncomfortably intense. We must plan for months to find the rare weekend everyone has free. We stay at my daughter’s house, and we get on each other’s nerves. I long to just drop in and take the girls for an hour or so. I hope I would be more help than burden. As a doting grandmother and a reliable backup caretaker, I could relieve the pressure Sarah is under, the times she must get to work and the baby-sitter calls in sick. I also want to move because of me. At age sixty-nine a day will come when I will need her help. Why not go now, when Joe and I are healthy and can make new friends! The longer we wait, the harder it will be.

My husband is lukewarm. We have lived here for twenty-five years and have made a life for ourselves. We don’t know anyone in Providence. He thinks I am dreaming about making new friends at my age. The house is way too big, but selling it would be like getting a divorce. Every corner is a part of us. We don’t have to sell to make ends meet. Would we really feel at home in a small apartment in an unfamiliar town! What if we do turn out to be a burden! Will my daughter resent us! Will I be able to avoid intruding in her life? Would my other daughter be hurt that I was choosing her older sister, not moving to Chicago to be near her} The idea of the New England winters bothers me – Could they really be that different from the cold down here last year} I’m doomed to go back and forth until foe retires and we make a decision. I wish I knew the right choice.

Many of us link retirement with the thought of moving, especially if we live in the North or Midwest. As we buck the cold or fight the rush-hour traffic, we may dream about taking life easy in Florida or Arizona during our retirement years. But when retirement day finally arrives, how many of us translate this dream into action, taking our pensions, packing up, and fleeing to the Sunbelt?1

Some of us do. Although the proportion of older people increased somewhat from 1970 to 1980 in each state, it rose most dramatically in the Sunbelt. Furthermore, of the 1,662,520 Americans over age sixty who migrated out of their home states during this decade, nearly half went to five states, four of which are in the South: Florida, California, Arizona, Texas, and New Jersey.

Florida lives up to its reputation as our nation’s top retirement destination, in the past two decades capturing more than one in four migrants over age sixty. And as we all assume, it does have a much higher percentage of elderly residents than any other state. Whereas in 1984 people over sixty-five made up 12 percent of the total United States population, 17.6 percent of all Floridians were over this age.

On the other hand, the retirement exodus is highly overrated. If people fled south after retirement with real frequency, by now we would have a bottom-heavy country, with the highest concentration of older people in the Sunbelt. We do not.

Apart from Florida, the states with the highest proportion of older residents are not in the Sunbelt. Arkansas, Rhode Island, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Missouri, South Dakota, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Kansas, Maine, and West Virginia all have an elderly population of between 13 and 14 percent. And in 1984 older people joined the rest of the nation in living primarily in our nation’s eight most populous states, five of which are in the North or Midwest: California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan.

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GENERAL HEALTH