SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah is the youngest state in the country. No surprise there. Utahns have more children and thus a lower median age. But the Census Bureau broke the numbers down between counties and found numbers that show parts of Utah are really young.
The median age of Americans in 2014 was 37.7 years old, meaning half of Americans are younger and half are older than that mark.
The median age of Utahns is 29.2, or at least it was after the 2010 census. Utah is the only state with a median age under 30.
Now look at Utah County. The median age there? 24.3 years old. Cache County is close behind at 25 and Iron County comes in third at 28.4.
The Director of Research at Utah Foundation, Shawn Teigen, said those counties have one thing in common: a major college or university.
"In fact, when you look across the nation the same thing can be seen," he said. "You look at the ten youngest counties in terms of median age, across the whole nation most of those counties also have institutions of higher education."
But Teigen said Utah's birthrate is still what makes the state as a whole so young.
Take the example of Madison, Idaho, with a median age just over 23. Madison County has 37,000 residents with nearly 16,000 of them students at BYU-Idaho. That's 43% of the county's population.
Utah County has 551,891 residents. It's two huge universities, UVU and BYU have a combined 63,000 students, but even if they all lived in the county, they'd only make up 11% of Utah County's population.
