Michigan lawmakers approve right-to-work bills

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Over the chants of thousands of angry protesters, Republican lawmakers made Michigan a right-to-work state Tuesday, dealing a devastating and once-unthinkable defeat to organized labor in a place that has been a bastion of the movement for generations. The GOP-dominated House ignored Democrats' pleas to delay the final passage and instead approved two bills with the same ruthless efficiency that the Senate showed last week. One measure dealt with private-sector workers, the other with government employees. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed them both within hours, calling them "pro-worker and pro-Michigan." "This is about freedom, fairness and equality," House Speaker Jase Bolger said during the floor debate. "These are basic American rights — rights that should unite us." After the vote, he said, Michigan's future "has never been brighter, because workers are free." The state where the United Auto Workers was founded and labor has long been a political titan will join 23 others with right-to-work laws, which ban requirements that nonunion employees pay unions for negotiating contracts and other services. Supporters say the laws give workers more choice and support economic growth, but critics insist the real intent is to weaken organized labor by encouraging workers to "freeload" by withholding money unions need to bargain effectively. Protesters in the Capitol gallery chanted "Shame on you!" as the measures were adopted. Union backers clogged the hallways and grounds shouting "No justice, no peace." And Democrats warned that hard feelings over the legislation and Republicans' refusal to hold committee hearings or allow a statewide referendum would be long lasting. U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and other Democrats in the state's congressional delegation met with Snyder on Monday and urged him to slow things down. "For millions of Michigan workers, this is no ordinary debate," Levin said after the House vote. "It's an assault on their right to have their elected bargaining agent negotiate their pay, benefits and working conditions, and to have all who benefit from such negotiations share in some way in the cost of obtaining them." The crowds were considerably smaller than those drawn by right-to-work legislation in Indiana earlier this year and in Wisconsin in 2011 during consideration of a law curtailing collective bargaining rights for most state employees. Those measures provoked weeks of intense debate, with Democrats boycotting sessions to delay action and tens of thousands of activists occupying statehouses. In Michigan, Republicans acted so quickly that opponents had little time to plan massive resistance. Snyder and GOP leaders announced their intentions last Thursday. Within hours, the bills were hurriedly pushed through the Senate as powerless Democrats objected. After a legally required five-day waiting period, the House approved final passage. The governor said he saw no reason not to sign the bills immediately, especially with demonstrators still hoping to dissuade him. "They can finish up, and they can go home because they know ... making more comments on that is not going to change the outcome," he said. "I view this as simply trying to get this issue behind us." Snyder said he expects the law to be challenged in court but believes it will stand. He said unions were largely responsible for its divisiveness, having ignored his advice and pushed an unsuccessful November ballot initiative seeking to make right-to-work laws unconstitutional. The bitter campaign over the ballot measure put the issue on center-stage. "Introducing freedom-to-work in Michigan will contribute to our state's economic comeback while preserving the roles of unions and collective bargaining," Snyder said. Protesters began assembling before daylight outside the sandstone-and-brick Capitol, chanting and whistling in the chilly darkness and waving placards with slogans such as "Stop the War on Workers." Others joined a three-block march to the building, some wearing coveralls and hard hats. Valerie Constance, a reading instructor for the Wayne County Community College District and member of the American Federation of Teachers, sat on the Capitol steps with a sign shaped like a tombstone. It read: "Here lies democracy." "I do think this is a very sad day in Michigan history," Constance said. The crowds filled the rotunda area, beating drums and chanting. The chorus rose to a deafening thunder as House members voted. Later, protesters surged toward a building across the street housing Snyder's office. Two people were arrested when they tried to get inside, state police said. By late afternoon, the demonstrators had mostly dispersed. The governor insisted the matter wasn't handled with undue haste, calling the debate in the House and Senate a "healthy discussion." Michigan gives the right-to-work movement its strongest foothold yet in the Rust Belt, where the 2010 election and tea party movement produced assertive Republican majorities that have dealt unions repeated setbacks. Opponents said they would press Snyder to use his line-item veto authority to remove a $1 million appropriation from the bills, making them eligible for a statewide referendum. But the House swiftly rejected a Democratic amendment to that effect. Lawmakers who backed the bills "will be held accountable at the ballot box in 2014," said state Rep. Tim Greimel, the incoming House Democratic leader. But Sen. John Proos, a Republican from St. Joseph who voted for both bills, predicted that objections would fade as the shift in policy brings more jobs to Michigan.

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An ‘Encore’ Life Beckons … on the Far Side of Midlife

Marion Jackson’s airy, light-filled studio is filled with Brazilian art and sculpture. It sits on the third floor of a five-story, 100,000-square-foot industrial building in downtown Detroit that opened in 1927 to house the service department for Pontiac. The Corvette was later designed there. But that was before the U.S. auto industry declined, and the neighborhood became a wasteland of abandoned buildings. Not anymore. Today, 250 start-up companies inhabit the renovated building, which is the centerpiece of a business incubator called TechTown. Jackson’s venture, Con/Vida—in Spanish, “with life”—sells indigenous art from Latin America and curates exhibitions for galleries and museums. Jackson, 70, retired as an art-history professor at Detroit’s Wayne State University last year and applied her knowledge of northeastern Brazil to the pursuit of a second career as Con/Vida’s codirector. This new chapter in Jackson’s work life, much like the building the studio inhabits, amounts to a kind of adaptive reuse—of skills instead of space. In this, she has company. TechTown is run by Randal Charlton, a 71-year-old former jazz impresario and serial entrepreneur, whose human-tissue company was the resurrected building’s first tenant. TechTown, an independent nonprofit, was launched a decade ago by Wayne State—which recently hired 77-year-old Allan Gilmour, a former Ford Motor chief financial officer, as its president. By the prevailing definitions, all three of them are in old age—often portrayed as a wasteland of its own. We’re set to become “a planet that’s a whole lot more crowded—with old people,” Phillip Longman, a senior research fellow on health policy at the New America Foundation, lamented in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy. He and other scholars who predict the “hyper-aging” of the developed world—when walkers will outnumber strollers—worry about too few working-age adults having to support too many children and retirees. But economists such as Stanford University’s John Shoven find these gloomy forecasts “deeply flawed” because, he has written, of “the misleading way in which we measure age” as longevity becomes reality for more and more Americans. Our notions of old age are themselves old-fashioned, reflecting a time when the typical 60-something was physically worn out from laboring in an auto plant or some other factory. In recent years, scholars in a range of academic disciplines report seeing signs of a new stage of life between the prime working years and full retirement. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a Harvard education professor, calls this phase the “third chapter,” after childhood and younger adulthood, defining it as “the generative space” between 50 and 75 years old. Cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson—Margaret Mead’s daughter—labels the period “Adulthood II.” The creation of a new stage of life may seem counterintuitive. However, phases of life aren’t natural phenomena, like the seasons of the year, but rather social constructions. Consider adolescence. The concept didn’t exist until 1904, when G. Stanley Hall, a 60-year-old psychologist emerging from his own midlife crisis, wrote a book of more than 1,000 pages titled Adolescence. He was describing an extended period between childhood and adulthood free from grown-up responsibilities. The concept had a romantic tinge, but it grew out of fears that in a period of rapid industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, these minors would be running wild—anxieties that inspired laws requiring high school attendance and banning child labor. Adolescents began to be called “teenagers” after Seventeen magazine began publishing in 1944. Hall, as it happens, also introduced the idea of a new stage on the other side of midlife. In a book published in 1922, he described an “Indian summer” between the middle years and old age. Humans, he reflected, “rarely come to anything like a masterly grip til the shadows begin to slant eastward.” The book’s title, Senescence, may help explain why the concept didn’t catch on. But will it now? That’s hard to say. Before the Great Recession struck, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted a more than fivefold gain in labor-force participation by Americans over 55, compared with younger age groups. The economic downturn has intensified this pressure to extend working lives, while in other ways it has hurt. The unemployment rate for Americans age 55 and older was only 6.4 percent in November. But those who do lose their jobs tend to be unemployed far longer than younger workers. Fewer than a quarter of workers over 50 who lost their jobs from mid-2008 through 2009, the Urban Institute reported, found work within a year. Even so, older Americans appear to be trying to fashion a working life beyond the middle years—and often succeeding. Entrepreneurship, for one thing, is rising. For 11 of the 15 years from 1996 to 2010, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity of any age group, according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Twice as many founders of U.S. technology companies were over age 50 as were under 25. Across the socioeconomic spectrum, 9 percent of Americans ages 44 to 70 have launched “encore” careers, according to a 2011 study by Penn Schoen Berland. Their paying jobs, part- or full-time, are often in the public sector—as teachers, nurses, home health aides, and the like—or with nonprofit groups. The practical idealism of these late careers may reflect a shift in values as people mature and focus more on activities meant to contribute to society’s greater good. Such late-stage jobs fit nicely within the socially beneficial lines of work that Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone has predicted will need more labor: education, health care, nonprofit community groups, religious organizations, and government. An encore career may entail some preparation. The number of over-50 Americans entering divinity school has doubled since 1990. A Catholic seminary near Milwaukee, the Sacred Heart School of Theology, specializes in training second-career priests—widowers, mainly. This past fall, high-tech billionaire Steve Poizner and former Hollywood studio executive Sherry Lansing announced a $15 million partnership with the University of California (Los Angeles) to launch the Encore Career Institute, a program of continuing education aimed at baby boomers. The American Association of Community Colleges has started an initiative to accommodate the growth of the over-50 student population, which increased by 17 percent from 2007 to 2009. These things are happening without much of a push from Washington. After World War II, the GI Bill helped ex-soldiers gain an education and thrive. Nowadays, the federal Troops to Teachers initiative helps military personnel, many of them retired, earn a degree in education. But aspiring encore careerists can’t look to the government for much more help. A 2009 law promoting national service established Encore Fellowships for adults who want to move into nonprofit or public-sector employment, but Congress hasn’t appropriated a cent to fund them. Unless Washington summons up the desire—and money—to urge this transition along, the future of encore careers will depend on the private sector. And on a generation’s entrenched culture. As baby boomers live longer and wrestle with retirement, they won’t accede easily. The willful generation that Time magazine named as its Man of the Year—“25 and Under,” in 1966—never has.

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Are Connected Baby Boomers Antisocial?

Each day millions of people of all ages around the world use the Internet to communicate. Friends and family can instantly share thoughts, pictures, and even videos of events happening in their lives. Social media has enhanced creativity through sites such as YouTube and encouraged us to share our lives in as intimate detail as we choose on Facebook. [See Retirees Fastest-Growing Users of Social Networks.] But is all of this sharing, tweeting, four-squaring, and texting adding to our quality of life? Virtual contact is hardly as fulfilling and impactful as communicating face to face with a fellow human being. Baby boomers who are online all the time may be missing something more important. Antisocial social media. Take a moment and think back to a time when you were at a restaurant and no iPhones were being used by patrons. Any luck? You probably witnessed couples sitting across the table from one another having a nice dinner. But instead of conversing, each had their own mobile device in hand and was lost in communicating with someone not sitting at their table. Few people can resist snatching up their iPhone each time a new e-mail arrives. Is it really that important? The problem is, by putting the remote person at the forefront of your attention, you neglect the flesh and blood person sitting beside you. And the message is apparent that your virtual friend is more important than your real friend. [See How to Tweet Your Way to Retirement Goals.] Young people these days have some of the fastest thumbs you have ever seen, seasoned by years of frenetic texting and Internet surfing. Their wit and humor comes across in links they share and clips they reference. But have you tried to have a real conversation with them without access to a mobile device? How effectively do they engage without the help of a video clip or other special effects? Effective communication skills are learned over time and perfected through practice. Just like texting, the more you do it, the better you get. Conversely, if you do not practice you are less adept. There is real value in social media to the extent you reach out to people that you would not otherwise be in contact with. My daughter and me text each other almost every day. But a little balance between virtual and real life is not a bad thing. It's better to work on both sets of skills. I enjoy the cute cat videos and the laughing baby clips just as much as anyone else. But losing Internet connectivity should not be more important than losing our connection with real people around us.

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Advocates: More gay-friendly senior housing needed

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — At age 62, Donald Carter knows his arthritis and other age-related infirmities will not allow him to live indefinitely in his third-floor walk-up apartment in Philadelphia. But as a low-income renter, Carter has limited options. And as a gay black man, he's concerned his choice of senior living facilities might be narrowed further by the possibility of intolerant residents or staff members. "The system as it stands is not very accommodating," Carter said. "I don't really want to see any kind of negative attitude or lack of service because anyone ... is gay or lesbian." ___ EDITOR'S NOTE — This is the latest in the ongoing AP-APME joint project looking at the aging of the baby boomers and the impact this so-called silver tsunami will have on the communities in which they live. ___ Many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender seniors fear discrimination, disrespect or worse by health care workers and residents of elder housing facilities, ultimately leading many back into the closet after years of being open, experts say. That anxiety takes on new significance as the first of the 77 million baby boomers turns 65 this year. At least 1.5 million seniors are gay, a number expected to double by 2030, according to SAGE, the New York-based group Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders. Recognizing the need, developers in Philadelphia have secured a site and initial funding for what would be one of the nation's few GLBT-friendly affordable housing facilities. They hope to break ground on a 52-unit, $17 million building for seniors in 2013. Anti-discrimination laws prohibit gay-only housing, but projects can be made GLBT-friendly through marketing and location. And while private retirement facilities targeted at the gay community exist, such residences are often out of reach for all but the wealthiest seniors. Census figures released this month indicate about 49 percent of Americans over 65 could be considered poor or low-income. Gays are also less likely to have biological family to help out with informal caregiving, either through estrangement or being childless, making them more dependent on outside services. And that makes them more vulnerable, SAGE executive director Michael Adams said. "They cannot at all assume that they will be treated well or given the welcome mat," he said. Cities including San Francisco and Chicago also have projects on the drawing board. But the first and, so far, only affordable housing complex for gay elders to be built in the United States is Triangle Square-Hollywood in Los Angeles. Open since 2007, the $22 million facility has 104 units available to any low-income senior 62 and over, gay or straight, according to executive director Mark Supper. Residents pay monthly rent on a sliding scale, from about $200 to $800, depending on their income. About 35 units are set aside for seniors with HIV/AIDS and for those at risk of becoming homeless, Supper said. The Triangle's population is about 90 percent GLBT and it has a waiting list of about 200 people. The project's developer, Gay & Lesbian Elder Housing, plans to build a second facility in Southern California in the next 18 months, Supper said. But what took so long for the need to recognized? Chris Bartlett, executive director of the GLBT William Way Center in Philadelphia, noted that advocates spent the better part of two decades devoting their energy to programs for those affected by HIV or AIDS, which were decimating the gay community. While AIDS remains a priority, Bartlett said, the crisis mentality has passed and allowed the community to focus on other things. He said he looks forward to the Way Center providing social services at the planned Philadelphia senior housing facility, in a sense repaying those who led the gay liberation movement. "Don't we owe it to them ... to ensure that they have an experience as elders that's worthy of what they gave to our community?" Bartlett said. The Philadelphia group has been trying to get its project off the ground for about eight years but has been stymied by location problems, a tough economy and stiff competition for federal housing tax credits. Rejected once for the credits, developers recently reapplied and hope for a different answer this spring, said Mark Segal, director of the Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Fund, which is spearheading the project. It's planned for a thriving section of the city affectionately known as the Gayborhood. "I'm extremely optimistic," said Segal, also publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News. However, Adams said the real solution lies not only in building more facilities, but in cultural competency training for staffers at existing elder programs. The Philadelphia Corporation on Aging, the private nonprofit that serves the city's seniors, began offering such seminars to health care workers a couple of years ago, said Tom Shea, the agency's director of training. "They're going to be seeing a diverse slice of the aging population in Philadelphia ... and we need to be sensitive to all their needs," Shea said. Adams suggested that discrimination faced by today's GLBT elders could diminish in the decades ahead, since he said opinion research shows that younger generations are less likely to harbor anti-gay biases than older generations. "So we hope that the passage of time will provide part of the solution," he said. "But of course, today's LGBT elders can't wait for that." Jackie Adams, 54, of Philadelphia, said being diagnosed with AIDS many years ago meant she never thought she'd live long enough to need elder housing. But now Adams, who was born male and lives as a female, is part of a local initiative focused on GLBT senior issues.

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Mental Decline Can Start at 45, Study Finds

THURSDAY, Jan. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Sorry, Boomers, but a new study suggests that memory, reasoning and comprehension can start to slip as early as age 45. This finding runs counter to conventional wisdom that mental decline doesn't begin before 60, the researchers added. "Cognitive function in normal, healthy adults begins to decline earlier than previously thought," said study author Archana Singh-Manoux. "It is widely believed that cognitive ability does not decline before the age of 60. We were able to show robust cognitive decline even in individuals aged 45 to 49 years," added Singh-Manoux, research director at INSERM's Center for Research in Epidemiology & Population Health at the Paul-Brousse Hospital in Paris. These findings should be put in context of the link between cognitive function and the dementia, Singh-Manoux said. "Previous research shows small differences in cognitive performance in earlier life to predict larger differences in risk of dementia in later life," she said. Understanding cognitive aging might enable early identification of those at risk for dementia, Singh-Manoux said. The report was published in the Jan. 5 issue of BMJ. For the study, Singh-Manoux and colleagues collected data on nearly 5,200 men and 2,200 women who took part in the Whitehall II cohort study. The study, which began in 1985, followed British civil servants from the age of 45 to 70. Over 10 years, starting in 1997, the participants' cognitive function was tested three times. The researchers assessed memory, vocabulary, hearing and vision. Singh-Manoux's group found that over time, test scores for memory, reasoning and vocabulary skills all dropped. The decline was faster among the older participants, they added. Among men aged 45 to 49, reasoning skills declined by nearly 4 percent, and for those aged 65 to 70 those skills dropped by about nearly 10 percent. For women, the decline in reasoning approached 5 percent for those aged 45 to 49 and about 7 percent for those 65 to 70, the researchers found. "Greater awareness of the fact that our cognitive status is not intact until deep old age might lead individuals to make changes in their lifestyle and improve [their] cardiovascular health, to reduce risk of adverse cognitive outcomes in old age," Singh-Manoux said. Research shows that "what is good for the heart is good for the head," which makes living a healthy lifestyle a part of slowing cognitive decline, she said. Targeting patients who have risk factors for heart disease such as obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol might not only protect their hearts but also prevent dementia in old age, the researchers said. "Understanding cognitive aging will be one of the challenges of this century," especially as people are living longer, they added. In addition, knowing when cognitive decline is likely to start can help in treatment, because the earlier treatment starts the more likely it is to be effective, the researchers noted. Francine Grodstein, an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and author of an accompanying editorial, said more research is needed into how to prevent early cognitive decline. "If cognitive decline may start at younger ages, then efforts to prevent cognitive decline may need to start at younger ages," she said. "New research should focus on understanding what factors may contribute to cognitive decline in younger persons," Grodstein added. "This is consistent with what we have seen in other studies and the cognitive changes that occur as we age," said Heather M. Snyder, senior associate director of medical & scientific relations at the Alzheimer's Association. These changes do not mean that all these people will go on to develop Alzheimer's disease or another dementia, Snyder noted. "It is important to remember that the cognitive changes associated with aging are very different from the cognitive changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease," she stressed. Although some of these people may go on to develop Alzheimer's disease there is currently no way to tell who is at risk, Snyder said. "This is why it is so important to continue to investigate biological changes that occur in the earliest stages, because it is difficult to [determine] the cognitive changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease," she said. Snyder noted that Alzheimer's disease can start 15 to 20 years before symptoms are apparent, which makes finding a biological marker so important. "If a therapeutic is available, we can intervene at that point," she said.

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Why Some People Live to 110

SUNDAY, Jan. 8 (HealthDay News) -- People who live 110 years or longer have as many disease-associated genes as those in the general population, but they may also be blessed with protective genes that help them live so long, researchers report. The team of U.S. scientists noted that supercentenarians, as they are called, are extremely rare, with only one per 5 million people in developed nations. There is growing evidence that genetics play a major role in living to such an old age. In what they describe as a first-of-a-kind study, the researchers analyzed the whole genome sequences of a man and a woman who lived past the age of 114 and found that they had as many disease-associated genes as other people. For example, the man had 37 genetic mutations associated with increased risk for colon cancer. "In fact, he had presented with an obstructing colon cancer earlier in his life that had not metastasized and was cured with surgery. He was in phenomenal cognitive and physical shape near the time of his death," study senior author Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study, said in a Boston University Medical Center news release. The woman had numerous genetic variations associated with age-related disease, such as heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. She did develop congestive heart failure and mild cognitive impairment, but these conditions didn't become evident until she was more than 108 years old. "The presence of these disease-associated variants is consistent with our and other researchers' findings that centenarians carry as many disease-associated genes as the general population," Perls said. "The difference may be that the centenarians likely have longevity-associated variants that cancel out the disease genes. That effect may extend to the point that the diseases don't occur -- or, if they do, are much less pathogenic or markedly delayed towards the end of life, in these individuals who are practically living to the limit of the human lifespan." The study was published Jan. 3 in the journal Frontiers in Genetics, and researchers will be able to access the information at the U.S. National Institutes of Health data repository.

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65-and-Older Population Soars

There are now more Americans age 65 and older than at any other time in U.S. history. According to a new Census Bureau report, there were 40.3 million people age 65 and older on April 1, 2010, up 5.3 percent from 35 million in 2010 (and just 3.1 million in 1900). "The population age 65 and older has increased notably over time," says Carrie Werner, a Census Bureau statistician and author of the report. "It is expected to increase more rapidly over the next decade as more baby boomers start to turn 65 in 2011." [See 10 Cities With the Most People Over 65.] The 65-and-older population jumped 15.1 percent between 2000 and 2010, compared with a 9.7 percent increase for the total U.S. population. People age 65 and older now make up 13 percent of the total population, compared with 12.4 percent in 2000 and 4.1 percent in 1900. Females significantly outnumber males at older ages, but the gap is narrowing. In 2010, there were 90.5 males for every 100 females among people age 65 and older, up from 88.1 males per 100 females the same age in 2000. "Women outnumber men in the older population at every single year of age," says Werner. "Males showed more rapid growth in the older population than females over the past decade." In the 2010 Census, there were approximately twice as many women as men beginning at age 89. This point occurred about four years older than it did in 2000, and six years older than in 1990. [See Tips for Baby Boomers Reaching Retirement Age in 2012.] All regions of the country have seen growth in their 65-and-older populations since the 2000 Census. The older population is growing most rapidly in the West, where the number of senior citizens increased 23.5 percent, from 6.9 million in 2000 to 8.5 million in 2010. The Northeast is home to the largest percentage of people 65 years and older (14.1 percent), followed by the Midwest (13.5 percent), the South (13.0 percent), and the West (11.9 percent). Florida has the greatest proportion of people who are at least 65 (17.3 percent), followed by West Virginia (16 percent), Maine (15.9 percent), Pennsylvania (15.4 percent), and Iowa (14.9 percent). The state with the smallest share of 65-and-older individuals is Alaska (7.7 percent). Rhode Island is the only state that experienced a decrease in the number of residents age 65 and older. The older population declined 0.3 percent, from 152,402 in 2000 to 151,881 in 2010. "The fairly stagnant Rhode Island economy during periods of economic expansion elsewhere in the '80s and '90s meant fewer people at peak job earning ages arriving and more people leaving," says Andrew Foster, an economics and community health professor and director of the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. "However, recent arrivals of Hispanics and the attractiveness of Rhode Island as a place to live are leading to substantial growth in the 55-to-65 age range? so it is likely that Rhode island will see an increase in 65-plus by 2020." The District of Columbia's older population also decreased from 69,898 in 2000 to 68,809 in 2010, a 1.6 percent decline. Scottsdale, Ariz. had the highest percentage of people 65 and older among places with 100,000 or more people in 2010 (20 percent), compared with the national average of 13 percent. "Scottsdale, like much of Arizona, has attracted a large number of older migrants from other parts of the country," says Victor Agadjanian, director of the Center for Population Dynamics at Arizona State University. Four Florida cities, Clearwater, Hialeah, Cape Coral, and Miami, are also among the 10 cities with the highest percentages of senior citizens. Surprise, Ariz., Honolulu, Metairie, La., Warren, Mich., and Independence, Mo., also have large proportions of retirement-age residents. [See 11 Retirement Benefit Changes Coming in 2012.] West Jordan, Utah, has the lowest percentage of people age 65 and up (4.6 percent), followed by Killeen, Texas, (5.2 percent) and Frisco, Texas (5.4 percent). "Higher concentrations of people in the younger ages resulted in a smaller relative share of older adults in 2010," according to the Census Bureau report. Many of the places with the lowest proportions of older residents have large populations of young people due to the presence of a college or military base. Killeen, Texas, for example, is near Fort Hood military base, and Provo, Utah, where people 65 and older make up just 5.8 percent of the population, is home to a large university.

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