Publications
The Aging Apple: Older Immigrants a Rising Share of New York’s Seniors
2017
González-Rivera, C. (2017, May). The Aging Apple: Older Immigrants a Rising Share of New York’s Seniors. Center for an Urban Future.
christian gonzález-rivera
Over the past five years, New York City’s senior population has reached three important milestones. The number of older New Yorkers has crossed the one million mark for the first time in the city’s history. There are now more people over the age of 65 in the city than there are children ages 10 and younger. And for the first time since the end of World War II, the share of older New Yorkers who were born outside of the U.S. reached 49.5%—nearly equal to the native-born share.
Although the graying of the population is happening across the country, New York City is unique in that the growth in the senior population is being driven almost entirely by the increase in immigration since 1965. Between 1980 and 2015, New York’s City’s foreign-born population grew by 1.6 million, or 95%. But while a whopping 95% of the city’s older immigrants came from Europe in 1950, today’s seniors are vastly more diverse. Now only 26% of older immigrants are from Europe, while 46% are from Latin America and the Caribbean and 23% are from Asia and Oceania.
The growth in New York’s older immigrant population is far outpacing that of the U.S. born senior population. The rich diversity of New York’s senior population reflects the city’s long history as a beacon to immigrants from around the world. But this diversity has significant implications for the way senior services are delivered. As a group, immigrant seniors are 1.5 times as likely as native-born seniors to be poor, and almost two out of three speak English less than very well. Immigrant seniors and their families are less likely than native-born seniors to receive critical social support services, and the nonprofit organizations that serve immigrant seniors tend to be smaller and less well-funded than those that serve the general senior population.