What happens when the baby boomers die?

[LargeSquareRock]

Sorry about the title, but that’s literally it. I’ve wondered this since I was a child.

Obviously we are about to enter a 20 year spike when a smaller number of tax payers support a higher number of elderly people in healthcare and elder care.

What happens in 20 years when the spike is over? Do we have empty care homes, plentiful housing and easily available health care?

I really have no evil agenda asking this- demographics has always fascinated me.

What’s wrong with that though? If they’ve paid taxes in the UK for their whole working life?

I would expect to pay private health insurance for a qualifying period (it's usually about 12-24 months, at the going rate) before enrolling with the local state-backed health insurance model. This is my understanding of how it currently works, in general, across the EU. A migrant pays in; I don't have a problem with that. I'm not expecting a free ticket.

And actually, in most countries, I would be a tax payer anyway.

If I can afford to buy a home outright at a price that qualifies for a golden visa, why should I not be expected to contribute to the cost of any health care I need?

I thought baby boomers were the babies of the boom years, not that they were having many many babies?

@Bodeganights the first years of the "baby boom" were not booming. Rationing only ended in 1953. But yes, a lot of babies were born in those years, as a response to the population losses of ww2.

My son's generation who are early 20s hardly drink any alcohol and many are very into fitness.

@Sourisblanche , my DM died three weeks ago at 89 having not seen a doctor in eight months, and her last hospital admittance was for a prolapse in 1976. My father is still living at 91. My grandparents were 94, 89 and 87 when they died (the other died in an accident at about 55). On genetics alone, I doubt I am going to be a significant long term expense to any health care programme.

l think that an awful lot of people don’t realise that what we have nowadays wasn’t there when us female Boomers left school

For a start we weren’t allowed a credit card and all sorts of different financial stuff unless our fathers/husbands etc signed to say we could.

A lot of jobs and careers weren’t open to females

For everyone of our generation when we left school there was no minimum wage and with 4 million unemployed it was a case of employers offering a pittance and seeing who was desperate enough to accept

As a rule you didn’t go to university
Most didn’t do A levels as they were expected to get a job and start contributing to the household expenses

University was for the brightest who could afford it and for those that didn’t mind living in squalor and working for 3 years (look up The Young Ones😅)

We had 100% mortgages but the multiples were 1.5 x the higher earner and 1x the lower but if you were earning too much of a pittance (see above) then you were screwed

You were either on benefits or in work
There was no taking a gig type job because if there wasn’t enough work after a week and you needed to go back on benefits it would take weeks to start it all again

Even if you had done your degree and was in a job as an accountant or solicitor most people I knew still worked evening and weekend jobs
There was no working extra hours for free as most people had to get to their next job

Even if you bought a place most people had a lodger to help with the expenses

There was no Section 21 so as a landlord if someone moved into your property you couldn’t get them out so rentals were few and far between and in terrible condition.

There was no internet. No information unless you knew someone or there was a book in the library or it was in the newspaper.

I sometimes wonder how we survived

It would be ironic if it ends up costing the taxpayer more by paying pension credit and other benefits to those who havn't so far claimed it, just to save the WFA for those who aren't now eligible. I'd hope the Treasury have crunched the numbers to make sure the whole sorry fiasco isn't a massive "shoot yourself in the foot" moment!

@Papyrophile I’m sorry about your mum, I also sadly lost my mum this summer. However I don’t think anyone can assume they will have good health in old age and there’s something not right to expect another country to pay for the healthcare of retirees.

@Yalta

As a rule you didn’t go to university. Most didn’t do A levels as they were expected to get a job and start contributing to the household expenses

But back then, you didn't need a degree or A levels to get decent jobs, say, administration work in a bank, town hall, professional office, etc. Standard was 5 O levels including English and Maths for most office work.

You generally only needed 2 A levels for professional trainee roles in, say, a local accountancy practice, or tax office, or bank where you could train up to become qualified or management etc.

Likewise, nursing and teaching didn't used to be degree entry requirement, nor did police officers, etc.

Nowadays, a degree is pretty much "entry requirement" for even basic jobs. People aren't going to Uni because they want to be academic, they're going because they know they need a degree to get any kind of career.

It wasn't Thatcher who wrecked a brilliant adult education system!

Yes. Another own goal from Labour. I wonder how competent they are. Really. It feels like there are a load of loose canons in charge. The tories weren’t ideal, but it Did feel like they had competent analytical brains. Even if using them incorrectly.

For the love of god. The OP isn't concerned about older people in the UK, she's just started a thread to speculate about how society will change in the next few decades.

@Sourisblanche I did say quite explicitly that we would expect to pay for healthcare from our own pockets IF we migrated. But also that given family history that I am not expecting to be a health care black hole anywhere!

Probably not

If you look at things like what is happening in Tenby as an example. I think some people only see as far as their nose when they bring in these type of “money saving “ initiatives

They don’t seem to run through different scenarios and what all this means to everyone (including the very people they are trying to stop)

Its like the conservatives when they brought in not being able to put mortgage interest against tax

It seem to come as a huge surprise that rentals that once were home to families were turned into short term let’s where you could put holiday let mortgage interest against tax
or the rent went up.

Not talking about education. I’m talking about the switch from manufacturing to the service industry which was all Thatcher. Apprenticeships disappeared overnight and adult training centres/skillcentres were closed in favour of the drive to promote university education. I worked in a jobcentre at the time and saw the devastating effects of it.

Yes indeed. According to an article from the Resolution Foundation, as a group, baby boomers are taking out 25% more than they put into the system.

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/the-system-has-worked-for-boomers-at-every-stage-of-their-lives/

Or like Gordon Brown when he reduced the tax rates for small limited companies (making it lower tax than income tax), and was then surprised when huge numbers of sole trader gardeners, dog walkers, cleaners, etc., converted into limited companies. Doh! Who'd have thought it!!

His crazy Paymaster General, Dawn Primarolo is on record (Hansard) speaking in Parliament saying she didn't think sole traders would incorporate as limited companies "just to save tax".

Some of them are on a different planet!

And when the baby boomers have all gone, who do we blame then ? We didn’t have UC topping up our wages at the expense of the tax payer. We didn’t have the tax payer footing the bill for free childcare hours. By and large until the late 1980’s there was no maternity leave or pay. When successive generations reach retirement age I’ve no doubt that they won’t have paid in what they took out.

There was no point propping up mining industries when barely anyone was using coal anymore! Trains stopped using it, households stopped using it, factories stopped using it. And I'm pretty sure the statistics showed more mines had been closed prior to Thatcher than were closed during her tenure.

Britains' industrial base had shifted massively. One the one hand due to the unions constantly striking in the 70s making manufacturing expensive and unreliable. On the other hand, emerging economies able to produce stuff at a fraction of the cost of being made in Britain.

It was all inevitable.

And by the way, Blair/Brown also enthusiastically embraced the service economy as the future and made next to no efforts to incentivise manufacturing, apprenticeships, manual skills, etc.

I'm probably of similar age to @Badbadbunny . I left school in 1974, and was among a handful to go to university (from a selective girls school). Everyone else went to train as nurses, teachers, bankers, farm managers, etc. Most did secretarial courses. In 1974, only about 6 or 7% went to university so the cost of educating the very brightest for elite roles wasn't huge. We weren't generously funded but our fees were paid by LEAs and our parents contributed (means-tested) to living expenses. My final annual grant cheque to cover accommodation and everything else in 1977 was about £800.

Interesting Graph from ONS showing peak births and deaths since WWI

I started work in 1974 age 16, I wasn't allowed to stay on at school as my parents needed my board from my pay, I got a job as a lab technician/admin. I did do secretarial courses at school as that was the path I was expected to take