Retirement & Aging

The idea of Florida as a place of renewal and restoration serves as one of Florida’s great metaphors. Fittingly, Ponce de Leon’s quest for a Fountain of Youth incorporates Florida’s birth myth, a perfect symbol for a state so identified with second chances and eternal exuberance.

It was not always so. For most of Florida’s history, the state was too distant and too isolated for the elderly to consider. Since the end of World War II, old age has been synonymous with Florida culture. The presence of senior citizens, as much as Spring Break and theme parks, helped define modern Florida. Many factors—air conditioning, Social Security, Medicare, mobile homes, and aggressive salesmanship—lured millions of retirees to the Sunshine State. But most significantly, old age and retirement were reinvented and redefined in places like Cape Coral, Port Charlotte, and Sun City. Never in human history would so many people live so long, so well, in places so far from where they were born.