To understand what makes a location good for aging in place, researchers compared small towns in Iowa.

With the youngest baby boomers sliding into retirement, adults aged 65 and older are expected to outnumber children by 2030. The demographic shift will be a first in US history. But many rural areas, especially in the Midwest and Great Plains, are already experiencing this dynamic.

David Peters, professor of rural sociology at Iowa State University, and Ilona Matysiak, a visiting scholar at Iowa State and associate professor of sociology at Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw, Poland, report their findings in the Journal of Rural Studies.

“Aging in place is a multidimensional concept,” says Matysiak. “It’s not just about services, like a nursing home or hospital. It’s also about relationships with other people, social capital, and the possibilities of community participation.”

The researchers define “smart senior towns” as communities where seniors can live on their own, “safely, independently, and comfortably.” They say being a smart senior town is a good development strategy overall.

Matysiak and Peters emphasize that “smart senior towns” care about their older residents. But the seniors in these towns also mentor and create spaces for new leaders and ideas.

“Seniors can really help the community prosper and thrive,” says Peters. “They have the time to volunteer, and they’re often influential people in the community who have a repository of knowledge about the town and can lend their advice and reputations to local projects. They also often have money saved up to invest in foundations and projects.”

The researchers used data from the US Census and Iowa Small Towns Project, which has surveyed residents from 99 small towns in Iowa every 10 years since 1994. The survey questions relate to quality of life, use of local services, perceptions of community leaders, social capital, civic engagement, and community attachment. For this study, Matysiak and Peters focused on small towns with a higher percentage of people aged 65 and older compared to other rural communities.

Read the full article about rural small towns by Rachel Cramer at Futurity.