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Returning home…Communities struggle to accommodate 'Boomerang' effect of retirees with health problems going back home in ‘return migration’ 

USA Today on Thursday examined "boomerang" retirees -- "seniors who moved away early in retirement and are returning home" because they are "lonely, in failing health or want to be near family" -- and efforts by communities that "are seeing this return migration of older retirees ... to accommodate them" (Nasser [1], USA Today, 2/22).

According to USA Today, such retirees are "challenging communities in the Northeast and Midwest that already are grappling with the needs of an aging population."

The number of such retirees likely will increase as the 79 million baby boomers age and their longevity increases. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the number of U.S. residents ages 80 and older will increase to 15.6 million by 2025, up from 10.7 million currently (Nasser [2], USA Today, 2/22).

In addition, a National Association of Area Agencies on Aging study conducted in 2006 found that more than "half of the communities in the country had not begun to plan for the aging of their existing population, much less contemplate a boomerang population coming back in their community," group CEO Sandy Markwood said. As a result, a number of private companies are "sprouting to fill the void in public services for the aging," according to USA Today (Nasser [1], USA Today, 2/22).

Broadcast Coverage
In related news, PBS' "Nightly Business Report" on Thursday included a report on the increasing demand for geriatricians as the nation's elderly population increases. According to "Night Business Report," the number of geriatricians in the U.S. will decline by half in the next twenty years, based current rates of retirement in the specialty. The segment includes comments from Gloria Weinberg, director of medical training at Mount Sinai Medical Center, and Leo Cooney, a professor of geriatric medicine at Yale University School of Medicine (Yastine, "Nightly Business Report," PBS, 2/22). A transcript of the segment is available online.