All 50 States, Ranked by the Median Age of Their Residents

Utah and Washington, D.C. both skew young, but for different reasons.

She's going to Utah.
She's going to Utah. / Chad Springer/Image Source/Getty Images

Delaware ratified the Constitution on December 7, 1787, which makes it the oldest state in the U.S. Pennsylvania and New Jersey followed suit that same month. If you’re talking about the age of a state’s population, though, the oldest three are a little farther north—namely, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

For his data visualization blog FlowingData, statistician Nathan Yau charted the median age of each state’s (plus Washington, D.C.’s and Puerto Rico’s) population using information from the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS). Like the decennial census, the ACS is managed by the U.S. Census Bureau; unlike the census, which only happens once every 10 years, the ACS is conducted every month of every year. It’s not comprehensive—it is sent to only about 3.5 million addresses at a time—but the frequency means that the data is often more up-to-date than the census’s.

In case you haven’t thought much about medians since your high school math classes, here’s a refresher: The median value in a dataset is the one in the very middle when all the numbers are in order. The average value is what you get when you add up all the values and divide them by the number of values in the dataset. If there are outliers on either end, they can skew the average—but the median is always dead-center, giving equal weight to each value.

The median age of Mainers is 44.7, more than a year and a half older than New Hampshire and two years older than Vermont. Puerto Rico broke up the New England trio, coming second to last with a median age of 43.1.

The other territory included in the rankings is the second youngest: Washington, D.C.’s median age is 34.3, three years older than first-place finisher Utah. Those two places illustrate one of the most interesting takeaways from the data: As Yau puts it, “the distribution of age doesn’t shift evenly all the way down.” D.C. is so young because a significant number of its residents are in their twenties and thirties, while Utah’s low median age is mostly because it’s home to tons of children.

You can see your state’s median age in the list below, and explore all the age bracket breakdowns via FlowingData.

Ranking

State

Median Age

1.

Utah

31.3

2.

Washington, D.C.

34.3

3.

Alaska

35

3.

Texas

35

4.

North Dakota

35.2

5.

Nebraska

36.7

6.

Idaho

36.8

6.

Oklahoma

36.8

7.

California

37

7.

Kansas

37

8.

Colorado

37.1

8.

Georgia

37.1

8.

South Dakota

37.1

9.

Louisiana

37.4

10.

Mississippi

37.8

11.

Indiana

37.9

11.

Washington

37.9

12.

Arizona

38.1

13.

Minnesota

38.2

14.

Wyoming

38.2

15.

Arkansas

38.3

15.

Iowa

38.3

15.

Nevada

38.3

15.

New Mexico

38.3

16.

Illinois

38.5

16.

Virginia

38.5

17.

Missouri

38.8

17.

Tennessee

38.8

18.

Maryland

38.9

19.

Kentucky

39

19.

North Carolina

39

20.

New York

39.2

21.

Alabama

39.3

22.

Ohio

39.4

23.

Hawaii

39.6

23.

Massachusetts

39.6

23.

Oregon

39.6

23.

Wisconsin

39.6

24.

Michigan

39.8

24.

South Carolina

39.8

25.

Montana

40

25.

New Jersey

40

25.

Rhode Island

40

26.

Pennsylvania

40.8

27.

Connecticut

41

28.

Delaware

41.1

29.

Florida

42.3

30.

West Virginia

42.6

31.

Vermont

42.7

32.

New Hampshire

43

33.

Puerto Rico

43.1

34.

Maine

44.7