ROBINSON - Emilia Randall proudly says she's as old as the tiny town she calls home. The feisty 93-year-old just hopes she doesn't outlast it.

"I figured I'd live here until I die," Randall said. "Now, the damn town is dying before me. It kind of makes me mad."

As the population shrinks in small towns across North Dakota, elderly residents rely more on each other to keep living at home.

In Robinson, that includes taking turns as a chauffeur to the senior center for meals - and wherever else someone needs to go if he or she cannot drive.

"We've had people that have had cancer and the whole town offers to drive them around," said Mary Lou Hanson, the site manager at Robinson's senior center. "It's a pretty close-knit community."

In North Dakota, the need for such community safety nets is expected to climb significantly in coming years.

Census figures show North Dakota has the country's highest proportion of residents age 85 and older, and that population is growing. By 2020, state officials predict the number of 85-plus North Dakotans may jump to more than 24,000, nearly 4 percent of the population.

"The graying of North Dakota is just unreal," said Pat Randall, Emilia's daughter-in-law and the director of Senior Services for Emmons and Kidder counties.

The census figures also show more than 30,000 women in North Dakota are widows.

In Kidder County, where Emilia Randall lives, people 65 and older account for nearly a quarter of some 2,700 residents. About 42 percent of the people over 65 have outlived their spouse.

Robinson is a community of about 70 in the middle of miles of farmland northeast of Bismarck. Its short downtown stretch, lined with small white buildings, boasts a combination cafe-tavern-grocery store.

Many residents, like Randall, wouldn't live anywhere else.

"I call this God's country," she said. "The great wide open spaces - it's beautiful."

Widows here often move into a low-income apartment building owned by 82-year-old Elsie Whitman. Without that small community to socialize and look after each other, "they'd have to be in nursing homes," Hanson said.

Networks of family and friends lend so much unpaid help to elderly or disabled people that losing their services "would break the Medicaid and Medicare system very quickly," said Cherry Schmidt, a regional administrator for the state's aging services program.

A recent study by the National Family Caregivers Association said more than 62,000 people - usually family members - act as caregivers for others in North Dakota. The group said the market value of those unpaid services is $588 million each year.

Pat Randall said volunteers at the three senior centers in her territory logged more than 1,030 hours in January and February alone.

She said the federal Older Americans Act, which has paid for buses and meal programs, has been a lifesaver, though state funding has lagged behind.

"It's like our state legislators are having a hard time understanding that we need to increase the funding to match the needs of the people," Randall said. "If there's more elderly and there's less money, what are you going to do?"

State officials say a relatively new federal program gives them some flexibility in offering help to those who are taking care of an elderly or disabled person at home.

The National Family Caregiver Support Program allows states to tailor assistance to the particular needs of caregivers, said Judy Tschider, a regional coordinator for the program.

In one case, a woman needed driving lessons because her husband, who had always handled the transportation, was in poor health and under her care.

"That can help her in taking care of him as well," Tschider said.

It also helps both of them stay in their community as long as possible. That is a familiar refrain for those who work with seniors, Randall said.

As she eats lunch with a group of ladies at the senior center in Tuttle, Rachel Wolff, 78, recalled that one doctor was puzzled by her decision to move to the small town when she decided to leave the family farm.

"He said, 'How come you moved to Tuttle? Why didn't you move to Bismarck?"' Wolff remembered.

Anita Wagner, 77, answered for her: "You feel more at home here."