That's not bad news. After all, if you are an older citizen, it means the chances of living into your 90s or even past 100 are better than ever. In Oklahoma, the steady shift of the population from rural areas to metropolitan areas over the past 40 years is continuing, if not accelerating. The result is that in perhaps three dozen counties in the state, the percentage of older citizens is very high compared to the rest of the country.
Health services are the most obvious and expensive of the services required by older citizens.
But when populations decline, all kinds of public services financed locally suffer. Some have fewer than 4,000 citizens. When it comes to schools, county government, health departments, law enforcement and other locally financed operations, there are not enough productive citizens to raise the necessary money for adequate operation. The economic and social health of rural Oklahoma is perhaps the state's most intractable problem. Providing health care for seniors in rural areas is perhaps the best example of the problem.