Predicting Tomorrow: Futurist John Martin shares the demographic trends that will shape the Richmond region’s future
Between Richmond’s monuments and historical sites, it seems as if the city sometimes spends more time looking backward than forward. Not so for futurist John Martin, founder and CEO of SIR’s Institute for Tomorrow, where he analyzes demographic trends for municipalities and organizations to help them plan for the future. SIR is a strategic management consultancy that advises nonprofits, governmental agencies and Fortune 500 firms such as Dominion Energy.
Martin has been working in the Richmond region for decades. He says the most counterintuitive trend we face is a growing population driven not by new births and migration but by increased longevity and aging. “We’re going to have just as many people over 65 as we have 18 and younger,” he says. “Half of our population growth isn’t new people, it’s the same people growing older in place.” The future population of the Richmond region will be 20% senior citizens, he says — the same percentage as Florida today.
An aging population brings new challenges, but none of them are unique to our region — it’s part of a national trend of falling birth rates. “Boomers were four kids per family, now it’s 2.1,” Martin says. “We’re going to have relatively more older people and fewer young people; it’s a first in the history of man. The population pyramid is shifting to a rectangle.” And although Richmond’s population is growing older, it still skews younger than the state average: The average age in the city is 33 years old versus 38 statewide.