Can we talk about the aging population?

[Kendodd]

Anyone know much?
I don't see much serious discussion in politics about this and the challenges it will create. Policy just seems to be more of the same ignoring the fact society will fundamentally change and lots of the numbers just won't add up anymore (elder care, healthcare etc) Having said that I think we are quite well placed in the UK to cope being open to immigration from higher birthrate countries. Plus we will have a heads up watching how low birthrate and low immigration countries in Asia cope and what they do right or wrong.

Overall, I think, lower numbers of people are good for the planet, if predictions are even correct, people across the world might decide to just start birthing their own care workers though and upend the current trajectory. Anyway I don't think we should continue to ignore it's challenges.

Indeed @Towdalinenow there are several research centres, institutes, initiatives focused on the ageing population.

I don't know what the answer is. A gradual, consistent and even decrease in population I guess would be the ideal but things don't tend to work like that.

This is the problem. We as a society will not let nature take it’s natural cause. We pay billions and billions to keep people who are decrepit and miserable alive.

I dont think the biggest issue is people at the end stages of life in nursing homes. Lots of people have 20 years not working and never go into a nursing home.

Except sometimes 'end' stage can go on for years and years, there've been some recent threads on here about it.

Well they are getting an extra 7 years'-worth of work and taxes out of me already. Hey, how about just making everybody work until they drop dead of old age?

FFS.

You mean the homes these people have worked hard for years to pay for and maintain?
Where are they expected to go?

Definitely not the reason. It’s because they are cruel and regressive

It’s a problem but there are plenty of young people in other countries, and robotics and automation will only increase in the future.

Although the state pension burden will inevitably increase, the number of pensioners paying taxes will increase too.

The generation who have recently retired are significantly wealthier than ever before, so they will be less of a burden on the public purse per capita.

Don’t forget they are also spending in the economy and supporting jobs. Their economic activity will directly support local economic growth. The silver pound is very lucrative and many businesses will thrive selling new products to the future ageing population - and not just health and care related products - but things that make life easier/ fun/ more enjoyable.

So we do need to take a whole system approach and not just see the ageing population as a burden, but as an opportunity too. Perhaps rates of volunteering will increase?

We need to come up with creative solutions like these which are win/win for each generation, solving their respective problems.Eg countries have schemes where younger people can access affordable housing in exchange for a small commitment of time to keep older people company and carry out basic jobs.

Yes it’s a challenge, but we need to rise to it together as a country. I hope a change of government will bring greater momentum

Well if

Actually, there's been a huge rise in men (almost exclusively immigrants) entering the care industry. In many countries elder care is not seen as a female only role. It actually creates as many issues as it solves though unfortunately.

Nice avoiding of the second part of my comment. You immediately jumped to the conclusion that the pp must be an immigrant hater when actually all they said was the truth - that the majority of immigrants are male. Where's your stats to back up that not being true? It's not helpful to shout at people you suspect you disagree with "you're lying, you're lying" when demonstrably they're not.

I think you may be wrong here. I'm not sure of the statistics, but my MIL has daily carers who come to her home (after she had a stroke last year) and many of them do seem to be young male immigrants.

BS.
They don’t give a rats ass about babies after they’re born.
If they did, they’d support food stamps & Head Start & welfare & all the good programs for ensuring children grow up healthy.
But they don’t.
Their care for children stops at birth. They want healthy children to grow into healthy soldiers.
Otherwise, they don’t give a shit about them.
And I’m talking about Republicans in particular.

Where are you getting this from? Many of the care workers I've met recently are young male immigrants doing a fantastic job.

Besides society needs workers generally, not just carers.

You are probably right that many people arriving to the UK through illegal routes are not suitable to be careworkers. This has nothing to do with them being young men and everything to do with having their physical and mental health destroyed by the process of fleeing their home country. It is an incredible waste of human potential.

Well we aren’t doing too well at saving the planet so no reason to expect we’ll be able to sort this.
Perhaps people who are retired could do 2days of part time work. Problem is people ,ime, once retired want to travel or they commit to childcare for DGCs so hard to also commit to regular work.
Expecting retirees to do something could help with loneliness.
It’s the improvements in medical care which is keeping us alive so long -we can’t uninvent them.
People don’t trust others not to bump them off too soon so aren’t keen to sign up to ‘no medication after a certain point’.
There may be a mother virus that sweeps the world. Remember the not caring for the most vulnerable headlines about Care Homes.

Think we need to make people solely liable for their care costs. The age at which you claim your state pension is going up anyway and they will probably have to accelerate that. Maybe tax incentives for employing older workers. State dependency in working age populations has to be reduced. I think we may have to have a re-think about what the end of life looks like as well. I read an excellent book by a surgeon Atul Gawande “being mortal” looking at ageing and death.

On the having kids I think cost of childcare does have to be tackled quite urgently. But I’m quite comfortable and have no particularly financial barriers to having more children, I just don’t want any. Many people are choosing to stay childfree because they don’t want kids not because they can’t afford them. Or perhaps you could have an additional personal allowance at a reduced rate for each child rather than extra benefits, say 3k or something.

We probably have more than enough people to fill lower paid roles tbh but we do need high skilled immigration to help productivity.

It's almost as if we could do with some sort of pandemic that largely affects the elderly to rebalance things......

I certainly think it will be us that suffer from it as usual, not the protected baby boomers.

Aging demographic is a huge challenge for the UK, one of the top 3 I'd sau - but the government won't talk about it because that demographic is their core vote!

I think there will start to be more talk about quality of life over quantity, especially with many boomers now having seen their own parents linger on in a very poor state of health or with dementia for years on end.

We also need to find a way to make immigration work - it's so bloody stupid Braverman and her ilk being all 'we must shut the door on immigration'. You can't do that, and it's not going to go away, but you can think about ways to make it work for the UK, especially in terms of making up for the aging native population and in terms of supplying the care support they will need.

Btw us DH and I have all four parents still alive. MIL has dementia, doubly incontinent, immobile and kept alive in an expensive nursing home. She’s treated for every illness.

my dad recently told me, quite proudly, that this year he has now been retired for longer than any job he’s ever had. He’s only had two main jobs in his life. So that’s nearly 23 years now of being retired and economically unproductive. My mums similar. Both in good health, no money troubles, and on a personal level I love that they are around and active etc. It’s just such an unsustainable way for society to run: at this rate, with people retiring so young (both my parents retired before they turned 60) and living on for so long, it won’t just be their children paying for their upkeep (through taxes), but their grandchildren.

Think we need to make people solely liable for their care costs.

No way will that go down with the many of the older population

Agree

Do you mean medical costs? As this is already how social care works until you get down to 23k.