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Older Adults’ Quality of Life by Type of Rural Aging Community: Differences by Aging-in-Place and Retirement Destinations, 2000-2020 Hannah Z. Hendricks*, Paige Kelly, Ryan Thombs,

Rural populations are aging more rapidly than their urban counterparts. Rapid rural population aging is being driven by (1) aging-in-place communities and (2) the in-migration of older populations into retirement destinations. Aging-in-place is largely a function of out-migration of younger, working-age populations combined with natural decline among the remaining population. Meanwhile, retirement destinations are produced through age-specific in-migration among senior populations (i.e., 60 years or older). While these dual drivers of population aging are widely recognized, few studies have focused on the implications of different types of aging places for older adults’ quality of life. Addressing this gap is vital to understanding whether and in what ways the types of places in which people are aging shapes their well-being. This paper examines differences in quality of life among older adult populations in rural aging-in-place communities and retirement destinations. We find that quality of life does vary meaningfully among older adults depending on what type of community they reside in – but that the structural factors accounting for those differences vary by the type of aging place as well as the degree of rurality.