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.

To boomers following: please do not reply to my below comment telling me you/ your neighbours etc etc aren't any of the below. These are DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS. Lots of people won't match them. Even more do.

It's because they are:

1. retired, so have more free time, and retired earlier than any generation following will be able to;
2. secure in their fully paid off homes;
3. funded by a state pension that seems highly unlikely to be replicated at the same rate for future generations; and
4. healthier than any generation that came before.

41k is not higher rate tax band. DH pension is higher than 41k.

So basically you are saying absolutely no person that fits the criteria as a ‘boomer ‘ should comment unless they fit your criteria. You obviously have been brought up in a very privileged environment! In the real world this is far from the case .

Maybe it depended on the school. I attended a Scottish secondary school with a history of sending working class kids to uni. My dad was a coalminer. I matriculated in '78.

waves merrily

Yes...I get the impression that many of the people who feel that Boomers as a whole were better off are those who are used to middle class circles.

I acknowledge that I'm privileged, given my university education (made possible because I got a grant). I recall Mum telling me that I wouldn't have been able to go to uni if my siblings had survived.

We were certainly not well off, but I remember the shock of seeing the poverty that many people lived in when I was a student in Glasgow.

I recall being embarrassed when a fellow student said he'd offer the remains of his takeaway to the neighbours opposite his bedsit.

He knocked on the door. The father answered and took the leavings with alacrity: he, his wife and his teenage daughter were living in one room.

No. What I am saying is that there are demographic trends that can explain, to some degree, behaviours by certain generations.

Some demographic trends will apply to you, some won't. I and my family are from a minority background in Australia; this means lots of demographic trends here for my generation don't reflect our lives. That doesn't make them not true.

Unless you believe that boomers volunteer more because they're actually just better people than anyone who came before or since?

I lived in Australia in the late 80s and your reply now makes sense. Apologies ,but thought you lived in the UK where my response is relevant.
Can remember being surprised that so many Australian people were at Uni in my age group but wasn’t educated enough to see the difference between different demograph.
Sorry that your family have been discriminated….annoys me that has happened to you and your family.X

It seems incredible now that when I was 18 university wasnt just free they also gave you some money to live on, ie they paid you.
It boggles my mind that you now have to pay to do a degree to be a nurse, in my day the training was free and you were paid just about enough to live on.

I think I'm right in saying that there's still a grant/bursary for nurses in Scotland. That's one of the reasons why tax here is slightly higher. I'm not complaining.

Everyone starts bitching about and vilifying Gen X.

That's my prediction...

Everyone will get their turn.

I wouldn't worry about that, the boomers die and the new generation gets old, care homes will always be full.

People may live longer but there is also more awareness/programs to get checked, so people who get sick and end up in care homes.

Their property? Their children will inherit them.

Birth rate? Do you know how many people this government is allowing to enter? It was over 730 K in just one year, they care more about GPD than quality of life. I'm up for immigration but they also have to increase hospitals, budget to improve/expand the freeways, more schools, etc.

The government has to be better to increase the population in other areas than the major cities.

Absolutely this. I'm amazed they've managed to stay under the radar for so long

v true.
Actually I feel a song coming on! mayne we could all join in with a rendition of Mike and the Mechanics ' Living Years. '
The first verse says

" Every generation blames the one before
And all of their frustrations come beating at their door "

So be warned youngsters one day your kids will be blaming you!

Apart from the fact that

1. A large number of 'boomers aren't retired
2. Are still paying off mortgages
3. Won't be entitled to their pensions for another 6 years.

But hey, don't let the facts get in the way 🙄

A shame that you did not read that:

"These are DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS. Lots of people won't match them. Even more do."

The higher proportion of boomers are of retirement/ state pension age than are not. For the generation born 1946-64, all those born 1946-1958 are of retirement age. Only those born in the very last year are 6 years away from retirement.

And certainly significantly more as a proportion are retired than are gen X or millennials. Giving them proportionally greater free time, as a generation.

Why are you all so embarrassed and ashamed of the demographic trends of your generation? It's very odd.

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

This is still the case.

The rest of your post I agree with especially the lack of information, christ the internet is both a godsend and chilling. Both my parents bought a house while I was little, maybe 4 or 5 years old. And then interest rates shot up and they both had extra jobs to pay it. My mum took me with her to work in a bar weekend nights. That would have social services called on you now.

I’m more interested in how society will look with a retirement age of 70 plus. It scares me.

I think a lot of people will end employment when they get too sick to work rather than retire as such. Especially manual labour, our bodies are in general not designed to be doing heavy manual work that old.

This.
especially for generation rent who won’t stand a chance in saving enough to cover their private rental costs

Younger people will need to find a new group to hate?

I agree with your definition of baby boomers. Growing up, I (born late 1950s) was never classed as part of the baby boom. This seems to be a recent redefinition.

And for jobs like nursing, police and firemen, there was often work related accommodation provided, heavily subsidised. We had a small block of flats next to our town hospital which was the student nurse's home. The top floor of our town's police station was flats for trainee coppers. And there was a block of flats behind the town's fire station for firemen and some of the flats were big enough for families too. I have a friend who was a child back then and whose father was an ADO (assistant divisional officer) who lived in one, along with his mother for nearly a year between being given the post and finding a family home to move into! (They relocated from a difference brigade).

Going back to providing that kind of thing would make a massive help to people in those professions when just starting out.

I also can't understand why big employers, like pension/investment firms don't buy flats/houses near their major workplaces to rent out to their staff. They're usually heavily investing in other investments, such as commercial properties, etc., and it does seem strange they don't get involved in "investing" in domestic homes. Again, it would make a massive help to their staff, especially new starters or those relocating, to have somewhere to live at first, even if it's the same cost as the open market. More and more it's getting harder to even find a flat/house to rent, because of high demand.

Or better in-home care?