As I shave my sorry-looking mug in the morning and wonder when I started looking middle-aged, I often wonder and worry about the consequences of Maine having the oldest average age – 42 years – in America.

As we Mainers age and our children depart for greener pastures, I wonder who will tend to our medical and hospice care. How will businesses replace workers? How quickly will taxes for social service costs rise as incomes fall? Will property values for primary dwellings decline for lack of buyers?

The economic ripple effect of an aging population is enormous but, just like my face, it will be hard to recognize the change, as it will happen ever so slowly – and neither will get any prettier.

There are some obvious and not so obvious strategies for changing our demographics.

We could encourage having more babies, but we’re losing women of child-bearing age. Another strategy is continuing to use our social services infrastructure to invite refugees from war-torn and impoverished nations to make their homes in Maine.

“Making Maine Work,” a recently released report by the Maine State Chamber of Commerce (mainechamber.org) and the Maine Development Foundation (mdf.org), suggests that “actively seeking and integrating immigrant populations into our state is a strategy that offers real opportunity for enhancing economic vitality in Maine.”

For many refugees who arrive with almost nothing, the climb up the socioeconomic ladder may take some time. But the hope is that they will stay here and thrive. They will replenish the work force.

And there’s another, equally affirmative growth strategy: outright recruiting.

Consider the New York Yankees. The team’s longtime owner, George Steinbrenner, did not advertise the beauty and quality of Yankee Stadium and then wait for talent to walk onto the field. He acquired some of the best players in baseball and delivered seven World Series championships between his purchase of the team in 1973 and his death in July.

During the last 20 years, Maine has touted its quality of place as a nearly tangible and unmatched characteristic to attract new players. Since introducing the marketing motto “Maine: The way life should be,” however, the state’s population has grown at roughly one-third the rate of the nation, and our team is getting older every day.

If we want to add entrepreneurial world-class workers who bring or attract investment, we need to bring them on board one player at a time.

Maine businesses should be encouraged to go scouting for skilled workers in places like Utah and Texas, where about 30 percent of the population is younger than 18, compared with Maine’s 23 percent.

The economic activity in those states is among the top five in the country, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. China (1.3 billion) and India (1.9 billion) should be on the scouting schedule, too.

What would happen if Maine took all of its economic development money for the next decade and made a big bet, saying to Maine businesses: “We’ll pay the relocation charges for all the out-of-state workers you hire as long as they have college degrees and stay for a minimum of five years.” If Maine is really the way life should be, they’ll stay a lot longer than that.

There already is a similar incentive for our young home-grown talent, through the Opportunity Maine program. Education debt can be forgiven if college graduates stay and work in Maine. A recruiting incentive would round out a strategy of retention and attraction if we have the right incentives. After all, a qualified work force is the greatest challenge facing Maine employers. We simply need the right incentives.

On a recent National Public Radio segment, Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University told the story of how an economist changed the lives of English prisoners who were being shipped to Australia in the 1700s:

As many as a third of all deportees were dying during their trip halfway around the globe.

Why? The captains, who were paid by the passenger, withheld food and any semblance of humanity, a practice that resulted in far too many deaths. Even prolonged outrage among religious leaders could not change the dismal outcome.

It took an economist to solve the problem.

He suggested that captains be compensated only for prisoners who were able to walk off the ship in Australia.

“The survival rate shot up to 99 percent,” according to Tabarrok.
NPR concluded its segment with this quote from Tabarrok: “A good social order aligns self-interest with social interest.”

Changing Maine’s demographics will require that we identify the appropriate self-interest that fulfills our social interest.

Attracting and retaining a qualified private-sector work force aligns our social interest with our self-interest and, dollar for dollar, may produce the best measurable results from public policy – not to mention a world championship team.

What do you think and what are you going to do about it?

Tony Payne is a lifelong resident of Maine who is active in business, civic and political affairs. He may be reached at: tpayne@midmaine.com.