From “The Gray Tsunami,” Jeff Wheelwright’s new Discover article about the challenges attending the increasing longevity of world population, a section about Sun City retirement community in Arizona, an example of how some white Americans used to retire:

“Del Webb was no demographer, but in the late 1950s he saw an opportunity in America’s budding crop of elderly. Promoting the then-novel idea of ‘active retirement,’ Webb was a very active 60-year-old himself. Tall and lean, a vigorous golfer and baseball fan, he was a millionaire contractor with a common touch. The people who flocked to see his Sun City demonstration homes—100,000 showed up over New Year’s weekend in 1960—had had their fill of hard times. These were people who had lived through an economic depression and a world war. The advertisements for Sun City depicted a golden way of life in a place where they could retire and relax, where they would not be frail or sick.

Some of those ads now hang in the Sun City Historical Museum, which occupies one of the first homes to be built here, next to the first golf course. Two vintage golf carts, labeled Him and Her, stand side by side in the carport. Inside, the modest fixtures and furniture of a typical 1960s retired couple are on display. The original cinder-block structure consisted of five rooms totaling just 858 square feet; an addition was put on the back later. The small eat-in kitchen features a boxy electric range and fridge. The sink in the pink-tiled bathroom is very low and the toilet is minuscule, hardly suitable for today’s amplified Americans. The three academics smile as they look into the bathroom. ‘There are no handrails, nothing to grab onto,’ Glick says.

Sun City’s radical idea—to restrict home ownership to people 55 and older—effectively excluded families and children from the development. But recently the policy was updated. Now only one owner has to be over 55, this to accommodate residents with younger spouses. Getting back in the van and touring the quiet, curving streets, with their neat plantings and pink-tinted gravel, the ASU group sees no pregnant women or kids, no young people whatsoever. Sun City has a fertility rate of zero.

The fertility rate is the number of children an average female will produce in her lifetime. The panelists note that the rate is currently plunging in almost all countries around the world. True, it has not occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, not yet. But for those who specialize in the long view, fertility collapse and accelerated aging have supplanted overpopulation as the most salient demographic trend.” (Thanks Browser.)

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Sun City promotional film from the 1960s: