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.

Yalta
“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😅)”
I remember it well! My DCs would have refused to live in some of the places I did!

“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”
Also you had to be a married couple and many mortgage companies wouldn’t take the wife’s earnings into account.

Boomer women did start working outside the home more, hence us Gen Xers being known as the latchkey generation and consumerism was ramping up so dual incomes were needed to keep up with the Jones's but they weren't taking on roles as captains of industry - they were checkout girls, typists and secretaries.

Women from the boomer generation were a driving force in many feminist movements and won huge steps forward in equality for women.

I do think the OPs question about how society will change when this remarkable and fascinating generation passes on, should include consideration of changes to women’s rights - whether pressure on women to have more babies to counter massive population decline, or to work harder so they pay more tax to keep public services going, (and charity work too), as working age population shrinks.

A lot of my friends parents and a few neighbours have had to sell to their family homes to pay for their care.

Like a lot of my peers, we had children in our 30's, probably ten years after our parents. I have dependant DC and am looking after elderly parents. I also work 40/50 hours a week.

By and large until the late 1980’s there was no maternity leave or pay.

@Rosscameasdoody, that's not quite right. I went on maternity leave in 1992. I had known for years that if I wanted the right to get my job back after maternity leave I would have to have been working for my employer for two years. The statutory maternity pay was something like 90% of pay for six weeks and then there was a flat rate payment at a pretty low rate for another 20+ weeks. You had to go back to your job by about 26 weeks after the due date if you wanted to resume employment. You were allowed to start maternity leave up to about two months before the due date, but the time taken then came out of the full entitlement.

Some employers paid enhanced maternity benefits, but the quid pro quo was that you had to go back to your job, or pay back the enhancement.

This must have come in in the 1970s because very slowly teachers at my school started to come back to work after having a baby instead of leaving, which was quite revolutionary at the time.

It's one reason why being self employed means you can work as long as you like and health permitting DH & I are happy to work until we drop with breaks and holidays as & when we wish.It hasn't been without its stresses over the years especially during covid but wouldn't change a thing. It keeps you vital.

It might vary from area to area, I guess.

When I started working in high schools in the '80s, I saw very few obese teenagers; now I see a great many. More obese girls than boys, but the boys are there.

I do also see slim teenage boys and a small number of slim teenage girls at the gym that I attend.

I'm in the process of shifting weight myself...but I was slim as a teenager. I find myself wondering what's going to happen to the teenagers who are currently obese. It's a health crisis in the making.

I'm in my 60s, but I'm seeing much larger women going around who look to be in their 30s.

I know that the local health board is trying to do something about health in the area: I was referred to the local gym after finishing my physio sessions, following a shoulder op - a "fitness for life class". My problem was muscle loss following depression after my husband died. However, merely by attending the class I lost a stone over 6 months. I've increased my protein and I'm now attending 3 to 4 gym sessions a week and I'm getting fitter though nothing will help my knees - there's a congenital condition, patella alta, which means that they're prone to locking on me. I'm 5ft 9. Another two stone and I'll be back down to my "normal" weight.

When I started, my thigh muscles had atrophied to the extent that I needed to push up with my arms to stand up. Now my thighs are strong enough to raise me while I'm holding a 5kg medicine ball and I'm doing arm raises with two 4kg weights and I'm back to using a lat press. The aim is to do better, in order to keep healthy enough to be independent.

Most of the people in my class are there following operations. There are also another couple of classes for obese people. (Some are clearly morbidly obese.) All the classes run for 12 sessions with an option to continue at the drop-in classes. The problem is that the younger obese folk are having difficulty fitting the classes into their schedule. I get the problem - I couldn't return to the gym while I was still caring for my late husband.

I do worry about obviously obese teenagers, though. Part of the problem nowadays is that when they refuse to participate in PE by "forgetting" their kit the school really can't do anything about that these days. The other problem, of course, is the amount of fast food that they eat.

This depends on which end of the Boomer era you were born. People now in their early 60s described as part of the Boomer generation had the same opportunity to go to university as they do today.They received grants and most women with a degree went on to have careers as well as getting married and starting a family. At least this was the case amongst my school contemporaries.

Err look at @Badbadbunny post at 12.28…that answers your question!
I work with people who are ‘boomers’ and many of them will not be retiring until they are close to death,tired,live in rented accommodation,no inheritance ever !
Worked their bollocks off since they were 15/16 and they are the majority of that generation.

I'm a late end Boomer. Certainly, I had the advantage of a uni education and the huge advantage of a grant.

Like many other Boomers, I also had the experience of living in a one-bedroom coldwater flat. I'll not go into the rest - I'll be accused of doing a Yorkshiremen sketch.

I also recall the shock of discovering that - while I had to make the same pension contributions as my male colleagues - if I died in service (teaching) my parents wouldn't get my contributions paid to them, but those of a male colleague would go to his parents. Apparently, the possession of a pair of testicles made all the difference.

Nope ,I am early 60s and definitely not the opportunities ,unless super intelligent.
I went to private school and very few of my contemporaries went to Uni …fact.

Interesting, so why are there so many men & women in their late 50s early 60s & not yet retired working in professions which require a university degree? 🤔

Sorry but university education was considered for the elite and didn't even start its expansion to the figures we see today until well into the 1980s. So not on the cards for the majority of late Boomers, or even early Gen Xers.

As mentioned previously careers that are now only degree entry were open, people who missed the boat educational worked their way up, did degrees or training on the job or later in life.

Maybe those professions didn't require a university degree at that time.

Or maybe 7 to 25% of a big cohort of people comes to more professionals than 40% of a smaller cohort of people.

University participation rates are well documented.

That's certainly the case for nursing degrees. The first entry for the Glasgow Uni nursing degree was 1978.

@finaGotpaid, I was born in the early 1960s and I went to a direct grant school - an academically selective fee-paying school taking a lot of scholarship girls and others on means-tested place, funded by a grant from the government. I would say 80-90% of each year group stayed on after O levels to do A levels and most of those went on to do degrees - at polytechnic in a few cases, but most of us went to university. A few went instead to teacher training college, nursing or physiotherapy training, or art college. I don't think we were super intelligent, so much as very lucky to get the opportunity of this kind of education. I had a Saturday job where I met lots of girls my age who went to comprehensive schools. They were bright, capable girls but not much was expected of them at school. It was quite an eye-opener to me to realise how fortunate my schoolfriends and I were. Plenty of others, though, attending grammar schools and in the top streams of comprehensives. Around 8% of my year group went on to higher education, I think. Not an insignifcant number.

The people who left school in the late 1970s early 1980s in my school were far from elite. They worked hard and were simply very clever.Anyone who passed the necessary exams and wanted to go to university applied, were accepted & received good grants

That’s the kind of discussions about societal change post baby boomers am interested in- it was a very open OP and I would love to know how you think things will pan out.

I really don't think anything especially noticeable will happen. Although they were born within a specific 18 year time-frame, they won't all pass away within an 18 year time frame. I think any effects that might be felt will be very diluted tbh.

Because unless it was a recognised profession ie law ,medicine etc ,they were promoted,friends of friends etc .I have many successful friends and they did not go to Uni .

@Badbadbunny was not begrudging pensioners receiving a pension.

She was pointing out that @Devilsadvocat cannot on the one hand claim to be 'self sufficient' (aka not receiving benefits from the government) while also receiving benefits from the government.

Congratulations on your anecdotes which have zero relevance in a conversation about demographic trends.

I’m last boomer year, went to a state comp and loads of people went to uni (or polytechnics) - by no means just the brightest

And also to add to the question what happens next - the numbers born are influenced by both the number of the population of reproductive age and both rate. So while boomers had few children each there were a lot of them in total, so numbers of old people will not fall off a cliff - we’ll experience a degree of population momentum.

Because when the requirement for a degree for people starting in a career came in the people already in post weren't kicked out. My aunts became teachers in the 1960's via teacher training college rather than via university. They remained qualified teachers until their retirements despite the requirements altering during this period so a degree became necessary for QT status. The same applied for a range of roles. My dad rose to a senior management position from a starting point as a sale assistant. Now that role would be recruited differently with applicants needing a degree in order to apply.