WASHINGTON—The U.S. Census Bureau has released the 2020 Census Demographic Profile and Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (DHC). These products provide the next round of data available from the 2020 Census, adding more detail to the population counts and basic demographic and housing statistics previously released for the purposes of congressional apportionment and legislative redistricting.

“These statistics belong to the American people. Thank you for your participation in the census and encouraging your friends, neighbors and community to respond. We’re giving these data back to you now to understand and benefit your community,” Census Bureau Director Robert L. Santos said. “2020 Census data will serve as an important baseline for years to come for our annual surveys and population estimates, and in the community planning and funding decisions taking place around the nation.”

The newly released 2020 Census data products go beyond the data already available on the total population, the voting-age (age 18 and older) population, race, Hispanic origin and housing occupancy. This release contains more detailed age groups, the first data available on sex from the 2020 Census, information on families and households and more detail on housing. They also show the intersection of many of these topics by race and Hispanic origin.

The 2020 Census shows the following about the nation’s age composition:

• Between 2010 and 2020, median age in the U.S. grew older due to an increase in the older population.
  • In 2020, there were 55.8 million people age 65 and over in the United States (16.8% of the total population), up 38.6% from 40.3 million in 2010. This growth primarily reflected the aging Baby Boomer cohort.
  • Centenarians grew 50% since 2010, the fastest recent census-to-census percent change for that age group.
  • For people age 70 and over, the male population experienced a larger growth rate between 2010 and 2020 (42.2%) than females (29.5%).

• In 1970, after all the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) had been born, half of the population was younger than 28.1 years old. By 2020, the median age was 38.8, an increase of more than 10 years over the past five decades.
  • In 2020, the population age 45 and over accounted for 42% of the total population, up from 27% in 1940, the census before the Baby Boom began.
  • The share of the population age 65 and over more than doubled between 1940 and 2020, from less than 7% to nearly 17%.

• In 2020, there were over 73.1 million children under age 18 (22.1% of the total U.S. population), down 1.4% from 74.2 million in 2010. The biggest decline was among the under-5 age group, whose share of the population dropped by 8.9% or 1.8 million. This finding is consistent with the decline in the total number of births and the birth rate for the United States since 2015.

• Fourteen states had a median age over 40, twice as many as in 2010.
• 25 states had higher shares of population age 65 and older than Florida had in 2010 (17.3%), when it had the highest share of any state. In 2020, Maine had the highest share at 21.8%, followed by Florida (21.2%) and Vermont (20.6%).
• Utah and Maine were the youngest and oldest states (as they were in 2010). Nearly half of Utah’s population was under age 31 while more than half of Maine’s population was over age 45.

More information on sex, demographics and housing can be found here.