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.

I think that this is one of the reasons that nurses' homes became less common:

https://www.fifetoday.co.uk/retro/1981-fatal-fire-at-nurses-home-in-kirkcaldy-973551

I recall being told that accommodation was sometimes available for teachers, but there was none when I started my probationary period in '84.

The birth rate has decreased all over the western world. In the UK its dropped from 2.5 to 1.49 children per couple. We have a generation of people who are not having enough children to keep the economy going. So we need people to emigrate to this country to keep the economy going, to pay taxes etc. We need people to come who have something to offer. As a youngster my family emigrated to Canada and the conditions for our acceptance were tough. They included health checks to make sure we wouldn't be a drag on the Canadian purse and a trade or profession.
Without an increase in the population of the country we have a problem.
Don't worry to much about the spare houses by the time we have paid our dues to the care homes, there will be nothing left for our families to inherit.

Completely agree with this, 100%. How refreshing to see a sensible view for once. It's about quality of life and I hope I'm able to decline treatment and die with dignity.

I wouldn't call a diet based on WW2 weekly rations 'healthy'. It was very basic and I gather that kids at that time made do with feeling pretty hungry most of the time, regardless of their background.

The populace were the healthiest in history while living on WW2 rations. Remember vegetables were not rationed and a lot more people grew their own, raised chickens, rabbits etc.

Feeling pretty hungry for a lot of the time is a well proven life-prolonging technique unfortunately.

When welfare state started a lot of elderly people who never paid in benefited from it, this was paid for by the parents of the “baby boomers” nobody complained then!
The grandparents of the “baby boomers”worked all their lives and paid taxes from sometime small wages, often have two jobs to make ends meet, so they’ve more than paid their share as did the baby boomers.

Erm Climate change? We need billions less people.

The birth rate has declined worldwide but the UK population is still increasing due to immigration.

It will be a more equitable society as their children and grandchildren will eschew their inheritance of the wealth accrued by their deceased progenitors hogging huge properties, enjoying the benefits of student grants and generally eating all the fish. Instead the next generation will return the money to the treasury to redistribute to the most needy and vulnerable in society. It will be heart warming.

ha ha ha . No words!

Is that you Keir?

Love it!

I think the surplus housing will be transformed into nurseries/daycare facilities for children whose parents both need to work in order to afford a decent standard of living in our modern day world. Boomers could afford to have one parent work and another stay home to raise the children (generally speaking), but that will be less and less of an option for couples in the future.

The demand on nurseries in the UK is already at breaking point requiring more and more state funding, though as many will attest that’s just a drop in the ocean. I’ll bet successive governments pledge increasingly more financial support for nurseries and incentivize people to set them up in disused nursing homes.

My Father retired when he was 50, 75 now. My mother worked PT as a teacher for about 10 years. My Father was a very high earner, he also has a phD in finance so avoids taxes, trusts owning trusts, drawings etc. My husbands Father was a GP worked past retirement age and said no when his accountant said he should make tax avoiding strategies. I guess it is a mindset. A lot of people would call my Father selfish and I can't argue. He did have 4 children privately educates with private health insurance. I know this is not exactly answering your question OP. I just wanted to say he will pay for his own care home and my mothers, should they ever need it. He lives very well off a passive income.

Well my parents are both Silent Generation (Mom born in 1944 and about to hit 80 and my Dad born 1935 and about to hit 89).

I’m 47, so Gen X.
My younger brother is 42. So Millennial.

My parents home (which isn’t worth much, literally around £160k) is left to us in their wills.

I currently rent as have never been in a financial position to buy. My brother moved back in with my parents with my young nephew a couple of years ago after his relationship broke down and he was made redundant.

The only way either of us will get on the property ladder now, is inheriting our parents home (or a lottery win! 🤞🏼).

And I dread to think what kind of state pension will be there when I retire. Or if indeed there will even still be one!

A huge amount of boomers are still paying tax and have done for 50 years or so. They have paid into the system for all those years: they are not getting something for nothing!

As if.

I’ve known a few people who have this attitude in their early to mid sixties. But not many have followed through on their principles when these conditions arise and they are actually in a position to feel their mortality.

Yes "generally speaking" it is. I'm a boomer and I always worked and so did almost every mother I knew. There was one who stayed at home and everyone thought she was weird as we all wanted to buy our houses, run cars and provide for our children. I worked fulltime but I knew many women who worked cash in hand or part time or two women I knew decided the higher earner would go to work and the other would do the childcare and they'd split what the first one earned. I knew others who worked in the family business but didn't get paid and wouldn't show in any statistics. I believe the number of women who worked is woefully underrecorded.

My parents had 3, I had 4. So many generalisations on here, you and I demonstrate that it was only some baby boomers who had fewer children than their parents.

I can only speak for how it used to affect the police. You got a rent allowance or a police house. Neither were pensionable so when you retired your pension was not as generous as people imagined so the current situation where they are paid a wage like anyone else is definitely better for pensions. I knew officers who were hit pretty hard when their income dropped and they suddenly had to find accommodation and pay rent.

I think it changed in the early 90s.

Yes but if you read the article I posted upthread, you will find that baby boomers are taking 25% more out of the system than they paid in. That feels unjust.