Mexico's demographic transition is changing the operating assumptions on which health care, family support and social protection have historically depended. Longer lives are increasing the number of people reaching older age, while lower fertility means future generations will contain fewer younger relatives relative to the number of older people potentially needing assistance. The result is not simply a larger older population. It is a different relationship between longevity, chronic disease, functional ability, household structure, employment and the capacity available to provide care.
That distinction matters because aging does not translate automatically into dependency. Many people remain active, economically engaged and independent well beyond age 60. Others may live for extended periods with disability, dementia, frailty or combinations of long-term conditions that require increasing assistance. The central policy challenge is therefore to understand not just how many older people Mexico will have, but how needs are distributed, how long support may be required and whether families, services and local infrastructure can respond sustainably.
This second article in the Mexico Aging, Long-Term Care & Community Support Knowledge Hub examines that demand side of the emerging care system. Article 1 explained Mexico's institutional architecture; this article asks what demographic change means for the volume, intensity and geography of future support. The strongest response will depend on translating population projections into decisions about prevention, workforce, home and community services, housing, financing, information and caregiver support before demand becomes visible only through hospital admission or family crisis.
Mexico is aging rapidly, but not uniformly
Mexico remains younger than many countries that are already managing very old population structures, but that comparison can obscure the speed of its transition. Consejo Nacional de Población projections show a sustained increase in both the number and proportion of people aged 60 and above. In 2024, Mexico was estimated to have around 16.5 million people in this age group, representing 12.4 percent of the population. By 2040, the projected figure is around 28 million, or approximately one in five people.
The longer-term direction is even clearer. National projections indicate that by 2070, people aged 60 and above could account for more than one-third of Mexico's population. At the same time, population growth itself is expected eventually to peak and begin declining. This means aging increasingly becomes a structural feature of the population rather than simply the result of a large population growing older while the base continues expanding at the same rate.
Those national figures should not be interpreted as one uniform transition. Different entities are aging at markedly different speeds. Ciudad de México is considerably further through the transition than states such as Chiapas. Migration, fertility, life expectancy, urbanization and economic opportunity all influence local age structures. Consequently, Mexico will need to manage several demographic realities at once: some territories will face comparatively advanced population aging while others retain younger populations but may experience weaker infrastructure, poverty or geographic barriers.
This creates a planning requirement that national averages cannot satisfy. A federal care strategy may define overall direction, but workforce development, service location, transport, home support and community infrastructure need to reflect state and municipal population structures. A place in which more than a quarter of residents may eventually be older people requires different capacity assumptions from a rapidly growing younger region.
Longer life changes the duration of support as well as its volume
Population aging is partly the consequence of success. Improvements in survival, public health, sanitation, clinical care and living conditions have enabled more Mexicans to reach later life. Life expectancy has increased substantially over the long term and is expected to continue rising. This creates opportunities for longer participation in family, community and economic life.
It also changes the time horizon of care planning. A person who develops functional limitations in their seventies may live for many further years. Dementia, reduced mobility, sensory impairment or chronic conditions may therefore create support requirements that are sustained rather than episodic. The financing, workforce and caregiver implications are very different from those associated with a short period of acute illness.
For health systems, the operational shift is from treating isolated episodes towards managing trajectories. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, arthritis and other long-term conditions may coexist and interact with mobility, cognition and nutrition. Successful medical treatment can extend life without necessarily eliminating functional need. Long-term care systems therefore have to work alongside health systems rather than being treated as a residual service used only after medicine has finished.
The stronger opportunity lies in maintaining capability for as long as possible. Prevention, physical activity, chronic-disease management, rehabilitation, nutrition, accessible housing, falls prevention and social participation can influence the point at which additional support becomes necessary. Demographic projections are therefore not deterministic forecasts of dependency. Policy choices can affect how people experience those additional years of life.
Dependency is not the same as chronological age
Using the number of people aged 60 or above as a proxy for long-term care demand would produce poor planning. Mexico uses age 60 as an important policy threshold for older-person analysis, but the population above that threshold is highly heterogeneous. A healthy 63-year-old in employment and an 89-year-old with severe dementia and mobility limitations occupy the same broad demographic category while creating very different service requirements.
Functional ability provides a more useful lens. Care demand increases when people have difficulty completing activities necessary for everyday life, when cognitive impairment creates supervision needs, or when environmental and social conditions turn manageable health problems into practical dependency. Housing accessibility, income, transport and the availability of family support can therefore alter the level of formal assistance required even where health conditions are similar.
Mexico's population data illustrate why this distinction matters. Census evidence has shown substantial levels of disability, limitation or mental-health-related difficulty among the older population. Yet even these categories do not map neatly onto care hours. Some people can remain highly independent with assistive equipment or minor environmental adaptations. Others require repeated assistance throughout the day.
Future demand modelling should therefore avoid relying on age alone. Stronger planning combines demographic projections with data on disability, frailty, cognition, chronic disease, household composition, housing, income and caregiver availability. Organizations exploring comparable capacity questions can use the Digital Twin Scenario Modeler to test how different assumptions about demand, workforce and service stability change future capacity requirements. It is not a Mexican forecasting instrument, but it illustrates the value of modelling several interacting variables rather than projecting service demand from population size alone.
The oldest age groups will matter disproportionately
One of the most important shifts within population aging is the growth of the oldest age groups. As more people survive into their eighties and nineties, the probability of frailty, dementia, sensory impairment, multimorbidity and need for assistance generally increases. This does not mean very old age is synonymous with dependency, but the distribution of care intensity changes as the population ages within old age.
This has direct implications for service design. A system built mainly around occasional social assistance or basic health monitoring may be sufficient for many younger older adults but cannot meet every need associated with advanced frailty or cognitive impairment. More intensive home support, rehabilitation, nursing input, medication oversight, caregiver respite, palliative care and residential provision may all become more important as the age structure changes.
It also changes the nature of coordination. People with complex needs can require simultaneous input from several professions and services. If responsibility remains fragmented, families become responsible for connecting them. As the number of people with complex dependency grows, relying on informal navigation becomes increasingly difficult to sustain at population level.
Operational scenario: demographic growth becomes a local capacity problem
A state capital identifies through population projections that the number of residents aged 80 and above will rise substantially over the next decade. Existing services appear adequate today. Hospital admissions are manageable, a small number of residential facilities operate locally and families provide most daily support.
If planning is based only on current utilization, no immediate expansion appears necessary. But utilization reflects existing supply as well as actual need. Families may already be providing care that never enters administrative data, and people unable to obtain rehabilitation or home support may simply remain invisible until an emergency occurs.
A stronger planning process combines population projections with functional-need data, hospital utilization, disability prevalence, household composition, caregiver availability and current service capacity. Leaders can then test different assumptions: What happens if more people live alone? How many additional rehabilitation professionals are required if falls prevention is expanded? How much home support would be needed to avoid unnecessary residential admission? Where are travel distances already limiting access?
The value of the exercise is not precision to the last worker or service place. Its purpose is to expose capacity gaps early enough for training, infrastructure and funding decisions to change them. Demographic intelligence becomes operationally useful only when it alters what systems build before demand peaks.
Household change may be as important as population aging itself
Mexico's traditional care model has depended heavily on relatives being available to provide support. That remains a major source of resilience, but demographic transition is changing the assumptions behind it. Falling fertility means future older generations are likely to have fewer adult children across whom care can be shared. Migration can place relatives in different states or countries. Women's labour-force participation changes the time available for unpaid care, while longer life expectancy can mean older spouses themselves are providing intensive support.
The care challenge is therefore produced by two interacting trends: more people may require assistance while the pool of relatives traditionally expected to provide that assistance does not necessarily grow alongside demand. Even where family networks remain strong, the intensity of care associated with advanced dementia, severe mobility impairment or complex health conditions may exceed what households can sustain without professional help.
Mexico's Encuesta Nacional para el Sistema de Cuidados was designed in part to make this hidden infrastructure visible. It examines who needs care, who provides it, whether needs are being met and what caregiving means for employment, health and economic participation. This is a critical shift in evidence. Family support becomes measurable system capacity rather than an unlimited background assumption.
For planning purposes, household capacity should be assessed with the same seriousness as formal workforce capacity. If a locality contains growing numbers of older people living alone, older couples supporting each other or households in which caregivers are already combining employment and intensive support, future service demand will differ from an area with larger multigenerational households and stronger nearby networks.
Gender shapes both demand and the supply of care
Women sit at both sides of Mexico's demographic transition. They generally live longer than men, meaning women are more heavily represented at advanced ages where care needs may increase. At the same time, women perform a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic and caregiving work throughout the life course.
This creates a cumulative policy issue. A woman may spend years reducing paid employment to care for children, parents or a partner and later reach old age with weaker pension entitlements or personal savings. She can therefore experience both the economic consequences of having provided care and greater likelihood of eventually requiring support herself.
A long-term care strategy that treats gender as a secondary equality issue misses a core financing and workforce mechanism. Unpaid care substitutes for services that otherwise would need to be funded or delivered formally. When women reduce employment to provide that support, the effects extend into household income, tax revenue, labour supply and future financial security.
For Mexico's emerging National and Progressive Care System, redistributing care does not mean eliminating family responsibility. It means making the balance between the state, households, communities and markets more deliberate. A system that expands respite, professional home support, rehabilitation and navigation can increase formal expenditure while also releasing caregiver time and potentially reducing other economic costs.
Operational scenario: when a family’s care capacity changes before the older person’s condition does
A 76-year-old man with moderate mobility limitations has lived successfully at home for several years because his daughter provides daily meals, transport and help with household tasks. His clinical condition remains stable, so a health-focused assessment might identify no significant change.
His daughter then accepts full-time work following several years of informal employment. The father's health has not deteriorated, but the care arrangement has. Without alternative support, he may begin missing appointments, eating less reliably and spending longer periods alone. The risk of institutional admission or hospital use can therefore rise even though his diagnosis has not changed.
A more mature care system recognizes this as a change in functional support capacity. The response might involve local meal support, limited home assistance, transport, rehabilitation or community participation. It might also involve reviewing what the daughter wants to continue providing rather than assuming she is either fully responsible or completely absent.
The scenario demonstrates why demographic modelling needs household variables. Formal demand can rise because family availability changes, not only because individual dependency becomes more severe. Systems that monitor only disease progression will identify this kind of risk too late.
Regional inequality will produce different forms of aging pressure
Mexico's states will not experience aging through the same service landscape. Ciudad de México and several other more advanced-aging areas face growing concentration of older residents and potentially higher demand for chronic disease management, dementia support and long-term services. States with younger populations may have more time before reaching the same age structure but can face deeper rurality, poverty, migration and weaker service infrastructure.
Migration can intensify these differences. Communities that lose working-age adults may retain older relatives and children, producing households in which the potential care workforce is smaller than population size suggests. Remittances can improve household resources but cannot automatically replace hands-on support, transport or supervision.
Rural and Indigenous communities may also require models fundamentally different from metropolitan provision. A service that depends on frequent travel to a specialist centre may be inaccessible even when nominally available. Workforce shortages can be magnified by distance, while digital approaches depend on connectivity, equipment and confidence using technology.
This makes territorial analysis essential to the developing care system. State diagnostics should not merely count services. They need to identify travel times, workforce distribution, unmet need, household composition and the extent to which people can practically use what exists.
For local and regional leaders, evidence should eventually support a differentiated response. Some areas may need larger formal homecare markets. Others may require mobile teams, community-based rehabilitation, transport, telehealth and structured support for family caregivers. National policy can establish rights and expectations while local design responds to population geography.
Demand will increasingly intersect with chronic disease and multimorbidity
Mexico's aging transition is occurring alongside a high burden of non-communicable disease. This matters because later-life dependency often develops through the accumulated effects of multiple conditions rather than one dramatic event. Diabetes can contribute to vascular disease, neuropathy or vision problems; arthritis can reduce mobility; cardiovascular disease can limit endurance; cognitive impairment can complicate medication management. Combined, relatively manageable conditions can produce significant functional difficulty.
The operational consequence is that long-term care demand cannot be planned separately from primary care and chronic-disease policy. Effective management of long-term conditions can protect independence, while poorly coordinated treatment can increase avoidable deterioration. Medication burden itself can become a risk when several professionals prescribe independently.
Health care and long-term care nonetheless remain distinct. The clinical management of diabetes does not provide help with bathing. A blood-pressure review does not solve inaccessible housing. Hospital discharge does not guarantee that food, mobility or supervision will be available at home.
The stronger opportunity is a continuum in which health services identify functional risk early and connect people to appropriate community support. Salud Casa por Casa could become particularly important in this respect because repeated home contact can reveal how clinical conditions affect everyday life. Its long-term system value will depend partly on whether information about functional decline leads to appropriate action beyond the immediate medical intervention.
Prevention can alter the demand curve
Demographic aging creates unavoidable growth in the number of older people, but it does not fix the future level of dependency. Prevention can influence the number of years people spend with severe functional limitation and the intensity of support they need.
This is why healthy aging policy and long-term care planning should be connected. Interventions with apparently modest individual effects can have significant population implications when applied across millions of people. Preventing or delaying falls, maintaining muscle strength, improving nutrition, managing hypertension, treating sensory impairment and supporting social participation can all contribute to longer independence.
The most useful prevention strategy is therefore broader than health promotion. It includes the physical and social environment in which people age. Walkable neighbourhoods, safe transport, accessible public space, suitable housing and opportunities for participation can reduce dependence on formal services. Poorly designed environments can create disability by making ordinary activities unnecessarily difficult.
Organizations assessing the community consequences of preventive services can use the Community Impact Report Builder to structure evidence around reach, outcomes, access and wider community effects. It does not measure Mexican policy automatically, but the principle is relevant: prevention should be evaluated through what changes for people and communities rather than simply by counting activities delivered.
Housing will become part of long-term care infrastructure
Whether people can remain at home safely depends partly on the homes themselves. Steps, narrow bathrooms, poor lighting and unsuitable layouts can turn moderate mobility problems into major dependence. Housing location also affects access to transport, health facilities, food, family and community participation.
As Mexico's older population expands, aging in place cannot be delivered entirely through health or care workers. Housing adaptation, accessible design and community planning become part of the long-term care response. Small changes made before severe deterioration may allow a person to remain independent longer and reduce pressure on relatives.
The issue is especially significant because moving into residential care is not necessarily affordable, available or preferred. If home environments are unsuitable and formal home support is limited, families can face a false choice between managing substantial risk themselves and seeking more intensive institutional support than the person otherwise requires.
Population projections should therefore inform housing policy as well as care services. Areas expected to experience rapid aging need to understand whether existing housing stock can accommodate reduced mobility and whether new developments are being designed for longer lives.
Workforce planning must begin before demand becomes vacancies
The workforce consequence of demographic aging operates in two directions. More older people may require health, rehabilitation and long-term support, increasing demand for workers. At the same time, population aging affects the wider labour market from which those workers must be recruited.
This makes workforce planning a long-term system function. Mexico will need appropriate numbers and distributions of nurses, physicians, rehabilitation professionals, gerontology specialists, social workers, psychologists, personal support workers and care coordinators. It will also need supervisors, managers and educators capable of maintaining quality as services expand.
Simply increasing headcount would be insufficient. Care roles need clear competence, training and career structures. Workers supporting dementia, mobility, medication or complex dependency need preparation matched to responsibility. Poor employment conditions can undermine continuity and create a cycle in which recruitment expands while retention remains weak.
Technology can help extend scarce expertise and reduce administrative work, but it cannot eliminate the relational labour at the centre of long-term care. Remote consultation may reduce travel. Digital scheduling can improve productivity. Assistive technology may support independence. None of these removes the need for people who can provide hands-on assistance, reassurance and professional judgement.
Operational scenario: workforce shortages change what can actually be offered
A state identifies growing demand for rehabilitation and home-based support among older residents and allocates additional funding. The policy objective appears straightforward: expand community provision so fewer people deteriorate unnecessarily or remain in hospital because support at home is unavailable.
The implementation problem emerges when local services cannot recruit enough physiotherapists, nurses or trained care workers. Funding exists, but capacity does not. Caseloads rise, visits are shortened and rural areas become increasingly difficult to cover.
A stronger response begins by redesigning the pathway rather than repeatedly advertising the same roles. Specialist professionals concentrate on assessment, complex decisions and supervision; appropriately trained community workers undertake defined interventions; digital follow-up reduces unnecessary travel; group-based or community rehabilitation is used where appropriate; and workforce data show where waiting times and caseloads are becoming unsafe.
The arrangement requires strong governance because role redesign cannot mean transferring complex tasks without competence or oversight. Training, escalation, workload and outcomes need to be visible. If waiting times continue growing despite redesign, leaders can then distinguish a genuine capacity deficit from inefficient deployment.
This is why demographic forecasting and workforce planning must operate together. A service model that cannot be staffed is not a viable response to population aging, regardless of how well designed it appears on paper.
Technology can extend capacity, but demographic aging also creates digital inequality
Mexico's growing digital infrastructure creates significant possibilities for supporting an aging population. Telehealth can extend specialist reach, remote monitoring may identify deterioration earlier, digital records can improve coordination and assistive technology can help people manage daily activities more independently.
At population level, these capabilities could make limited workforce capacity more productive. Rural professionals may obtain specialist advice without requiring every patient to travel. Families may receive guidance remotely. Health and care data can support risk stratification and population planning.
Yet digital solutions can also reproduce inequalities. Older people differ substantially in digital confidence, income, literacy, disability, language and access to reliable connectivity. A service redesigned on the assumption that every person can manage an app or video consultation may improve efficiency for some while reducing practical access for others.
The implementation test should therefore be whether technology expands effective access rather than simply moving the service interface online. Digital models need alternatives for people who cannot use them independently and should avoid transferring administrative burden from organizations to families.
Leaders examining these questions can use the Digital Transformation, AI and Cybersecurity Readiness Assessment to structure consideration of digital capability, governance, risk and implementation readiness. It is not a Mexican regulatory standard; its value lies in testing whether the operational foundations exist before technology is treated as a solution to capacity pressure.
Demand forecasting requires better longitudinal evidence
Mexico has strengthened the evidence base for care through the Encuesta Nacional para el Sistema de Cuidados and demographic projections produced by CONAPO. The next analytical challenge is connecting population evidence with service evidence.
Decision-makers need to understand not only how many people are aging but how functional needs emerge over time, what support people currently receive, where unmet need is concentrated and what happens after interventions. Administrative data can show visits or enrolment but may miss care provided privately or informally. Household surveys can reveal hidden need but are periodic rather than continuous.
A mature evidence system therefore combines sources. Population projections estimate the future denominator. Surveys reveal household circumstances and unmet need. Health records show disease and utilization. Service data show capacity and access. Outcome measures show whether support is actually improving people's lives.
The governance challenge is converting those datasets into decisions. A state may know that its older population is growing, but that insight has limited value unless it changes workforce training, budgets, service location or prevention strategies. Evidence becomes actionable when responsibilities are assigned and decisions can be revisited against results.
A practical performance framework might distinguish four questions:
- How quickly is the population at risk changing?
- What proportion is experiencing functional or caregiving need?
- What formal and informal capacity exists to respond?
- Are services preserving independence, reducing unmet need and supporting sustainable family care?
Those questions create a clearer line between demographic intelligence and accountability.
Operational scenario: when service activity grows but unmet need grows faster
A regional programme reports that home visits increased by 15 percent in one year. On a conventional performance dashboard, this appears to demonstrate successful expansion.
Population and household data, however, show that the number of older residents with significant functional limitations is growing more quickly. Average waiting times are increasing and a higher proportion of referrals involve people whose needs have already reached crisis point. Activity has grown, but coverage relative to need has deteriorated.
This changes the management question. The issue is no longer whether the service is doing more; it is whether capacity is keeping pace with demand and whether the service model is targeting the right people early enough.
A stronger governance review combines activity, population denominators, waiting times, unmet need, workforce capacity and outcomes. Leaders may conclude that further expansion is necessary, but they may also identify opportunities for prevention, triage, community partnerships or different skill mix.
The scenario illustrates why demographic context should sit beside operational dashboards. Raw activity can increase while system performance worsens. Organizations developing comparable assurance systems can use the Quality Dashboard Builder to structure linked measures across capacity, quality and outcomes rather than relying on service volume alone.
Financing pressure will depend on the model Mexico chooses
Population aging does not generate one predetermined public spending trajectory. The financial consequences depend substantially on what Mexico chooses to fund, how eligibility is defined, how much responsibility remains with households, how services are delivered and how effectively prevention delays avoidable dependency.
A system relying heavily on unpaid family care may appear less costly in public budgets while shifting substantial costs into households. A more formal service system increases visible expenditure but can release family caregivers for employment, prevent avoidable hospital use and improve quality of life. Residential models and home-based models also have different cost structures, although neither is universally cheaper for every level of need.
Future financing analysis therefore needs to consider total system costs rather than public expenditure alone. The economic value of unpaid care, lost earnings, preventable hospitalization, delayed rehabilitation and premature institutionalization all matter.
Mexico's demographic transition creates a particularly important timing question. Building capacity gradually before the steepest increase in demand may allow workforce and infrastructure to develop more sustainably. Waiting until large cohorts reach advanced dependency can force more expensive reactive expansion.
The National and Progressive Care System therefore needs a demographic financing strategy as well as a rights framework. Progressive implementation should identify which populations and services create the greatest immediate value while establishing a credible route toward broader coverage.
Aging policy should protect contribution as well as respond to dependency
Discussion of demographic aging can easily become dominated by cost and dependency. That framing is incomplete. Older people continue to work, care for relatives, contribute income, participate in communities and provide knowledge and social support. Many grandparents are themselves caregivers. Treating an expanding older population only as a demand pressure can reinforce ageism and produce poor policy.
The goal should be to increase the number of years lived with autonomy and participation while ensuring reliable support when needs arise. This changes the purpose of long-term care. It becomes infrastructure that enables people to continue living ordinary lives rather than a system concerned only with managing decline.
It also strengthens the case for age-friendly communities. Accessible transport, public space, housing, digital inclusion and opportunities for social participation support both independence and contribution. These investments can have preventive effects while improving quality of life for people who never require intensive formal care.
What Mexico’s demographic transition offers international systems
Mexico's experience is relevant to many countries that are aging before comprehensive long-term care systems are fully established. The pace and institutional context differ, but several underlying lessons travel well.
First, demographic projections need to become operating assumptions rather than background statistics. Countries that know substantial demand is coming have an opportunity to train workers, adapt housing and establish community capacity before shortages become acute.
Second, aging and dependency must remain analytically separate. Planning based only on chronological age risks both overestimating need among healthy older people and underestimating the intensity of support required by people with significant functional limitations.
Third, household capacity is part of system capacity. Falling fertility, migration and changing employment patterns can alter the supply of unpaid care even if cultural commitment to family remains strong.
Fourth, national averages conceal local implementation problems. Mexico's differences between entities highlight why demographic planning has to be territorial.
Finally, prevention is a long-term care strategy. Other systems do not need to replicate Mexico's institutions to recognize the underlying principle: investment in health, mobility, housing and community participation can influence future demand even when population aging itself cannot be reversed.
From demographic knowledge to implementation
Mexico already possesses substantial evidence that its population structure is changing. The more difficult task is making that knowledge operational across institutions that plan on different timescales. A health service may focus on next year's demand, a training system on several years of workforce supply, a housing programme on decades of infrastructure and a family on what support is needed tomorrow morning.
The emerging care system can create a common planning frame across those horizons. Population projections should inform territorial diagnostics. Diagnostics should inform workforce and infrastructure plans. Service data should reveal whether capacity is keeping pace. Outcomes should show whether investment is delaying avoidable dependency and supporting people to remain independent.
This is where governance becomes particularly important. Demographic change has no single owner. Without explicit responsibility for translating forecasts into action, every institution can recognize aging as a strategic issue while continuing to plan largely as before.
Conclusion
Mexico's aging population is not a distant demographic issue. The transition is already underway, and its significance lies in the interaction between longer lives, lower fertility, functional need, chronic disease, household change and uneven territorial capacity. The number of older people will rise substantially, but the future burden on families and services will depend on how effectively Mexico protects independence and builds support around people before needs become acute.
The central strategic challenge is to move from demographic awareness to capacity planning. Population projections need to shape workforce development, prevention, housing, community infrastructure, digital access, service financing and the territorial implementation of the National and Progressive Care System. National averages can establish scale, but effective delivery will depend on understanding how aging is experienced differently across states, municipalities and households.
The most important policy distinction is between aging and dependency. Longer lives should be treated as social progress, not automatically as a care liability. Strong systems aim to extend healthy and independent life while ensuring that people who do develop significant needs can obtain reliable support without forcing families to absorb unlimited responsibility.
Mexico still has an opportunity to build much of that infrastructure while its demographic transition is unfolding. The strongest measure of preparedness will not be whether policymakers can describe the coming age profile, but whether health services, care systems, communities and households are materially better equipped when that future population arrives.