During a Harrisburg press conference Wednesday Dr. Kyle Kopko, Executive Director of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Elizabethtown College, said Pennsylvania’s “overall growth rate will diminish considerably in the coming years.”
“Also, we can expect a sharp increase in the number of senior citizens that comprise Pennsylvania’s population and that’s also going to be coupled with a decline in the number of young people within the commonwealth,” Kopko said.
The press conference, held jointly by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania State Data Center discussed recent findings about the future of the Keystone State’s population – with data projections reaching to the year 2050.
The Center for Rural Pennsylvania predicts that the population of Pennsylvania will be approximately 13.1 million in 2050, only slightly more than the 12.9 million estimated in 2020.
In 1990, the population of Pennsylvania was 11.9 million.
The population of Lancaster County is predicted to go from 552,000 (in 2020) to 599,000 (in 2050).
In addition to Lancaster County, several other southeastern counties are expected to grow in population over the next three decades. Many more Pennsylvania counties, however, are expected to shrink in population.
For example, Pike County in northeastern Pennsylvania, is expected to shrink by nearly 25%, going from approximately 58,000 residents to 44,000 by 2050.
Across rural Pennsylvania counties, the population is expected to decline by nearly 6 percent over the next thirty years. The small projected overall growth of the state is based on anticipated increases in the urban population.
Pennsylvania already has the fifth largest “older adult population” in the nation, according to data from Gov. Shapiro’s Master Plan for Older Adults. Over 3.4 million Pennsylvanians are 65 and over.
