Arizona City Becomes Hottest Retirement Destination

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jul 1, 6:58AM EDT · Published Jun 30, 6:39AM EDT

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Arizona City Becomes Hottest Retirement Destination — © monkeybusinessimages / iStock via Getty Images

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According to a recent analysis, the most popular destination for retiring baby boomers is Goodyear, Arizona.

According to the Census Bureau, by 2030, all baby boomers will be over 65 years old. More than 70 million Americans fall into this age group.

John Haaga, of the National Institute on Aging in Washington, D.C., recently said about the Census data on boomers: “It’s our only way to figure out how things are different across the country, what areas are aging faster, where elderly disabled people live, or where older people are concentrated,” As would be expected, many of these aging Americans are moving to Florida. However, the most popular destination is Goodyear, Ariz., located west of Phoenix.

A new study by GoBankingRates examined 2017, 2021, and 2022 Census data. To make the cutoff, a city had to have at least 7,500 residents. The primary metrics were the percentage gain of people over 65 during the past five years, the one-year percentage gain from 2021 to 2022, and the percentage of the entire population over 65. The Goodyear metric on the first measurement was 61%, on the second 11%, and on the third 18%.

Sugarland, Texas, Claremont, Fla., and El Dorado Hills, Calif., followed Goodyear. (One challenge for people in any city is that the retirement plans of Americans are crumbling.)

According to the Census Bureau, Goodyear’s household income is 96,522, which is unusually high compared to the national figure. The poverty level, at 4.6%, is unusually low. Fifty-four percent of the population is white, while 33% is Hispanic.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.