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.

Clearly in decades past, there were fewer women in the workforce than there are today. There are many reasons for this, not least of which are that women were expected to stop working when they had children, and were often fired or manoeuvred out when they became pregnant.

Be careful making assumptions about cause and effect. Do women have to work these days because house prices are so high? Or are house prices high because more women work? I rather think the latter since the increase in women remaining in the workforce after having children pre-dates the huge increases in house prices.

I'm Gen X with Silent Generation parents and Gen Z kids so no skin in this game where Baby Boomers are concerned.

@TheCompactPussycat I worked as a teenager for a couple of years in the early 60s for a local authority. I remember a leaving do for a female colleague who got married, she had no choice! Being a wife and mother was considered an occupation, when there were far few labour saving devices. I did it for a few years, most meals cooked from scratch, no supermarkets meant regular local shopping. Hand washing or the laundrette, never ending nappies, I had two under two! I couldn’t drive, even if I’d had access to a car during the day.

When I started earning a proper wage again (rather the scrappy income from irregular temping) I bought an automatic washing machine and took driving lessons.

Ok, so disregard the figure for the 1950s, and let’s say from 1967 (when the youngest boomers would be 21 years old) we compare female boomers in the workforce to subsequent generations of the same ages
@Breathedeeper
The youngest boomers weren't 21 in 1967, the youngest boomers hadn't started school in 1967. The oldest boomers were 21 in 1967

Well you've got the age of boomers wrong as the youngest weren't 21 in 1967. The majority of women in 1967 who were of working age weren't boomers. You don't seem, to get that, just because some boomer women were working or not working in 1967 it doesn't mean the stats for 1967 prove anything about boomer women. Even if you produce stats showing the percentage of boomer women working in 1967 you do realise that the ones not working could have still been in education? We all know what your problem is don't we, someone who can't do numbers lecturing about numbers.

Don't tell me what to read, you can ask but you aren't in any position to tell me anything, my frame of reference might be judged as limited by you, you being someone who apparently can't do simple arithmetic. Just to clarify the youngest boomers weren't old enough for school in 1967, do you get it now?

My grandmother married in 1921, my grandfather worked in a government job and told her she had to give up work as in his job wives weren't allowed to work, so she did. The Monday after their wedding he went back to work, as he was eating his breakfast he told her she could have anything she wanted, she just had to ask. He came home and while eating his dinner she told him she didn't have to ask for anything as she'd been to see her old boss and had her job back.

The marriage bar started to be lifted in the 1940s and for local government ended in 1954. Did she have to resign or did she just expect to give up work. When you think about it how would her employers know she was married unless she told them?

@Iwasafool she had no choice. She didn’t keep her marriage secret, she accepted that was the situation at the time. I went into the private sector after that, so don’t know when it changed in local govt.

Local communities were more close knit I'm those days. People didn't travel as much, commonly stsyed in home town, word would have got out.

ISTR that (in the UK, anyway) it would have been declared for tax purposes, because of the married man's allowance.

I think in the future people will be enslaved to their new masters, generative AI so nothing apart from that will matter. Wall-E got it right. That or Idiocracy

He didn't have to claim it. My husband didn't as he was a high earner and I was an OK earner and it would have pushed him up a tax band (that was the downside of claiming the allowance.) Even if he did claim it his employer would have known (well there other reasons for having an extra tax allowance but they would likely work it out) but her's wouldn't have.

I lived in a city and thank God for that as no one would be worrying about someone informing your employer you'd got married.

But it wasn't the law in the 60s so why did she have to give up work? It ended in the 50s.

I was told it was the rule. I was a teenager in my first job, never questioned it. All the female staff I worked with in that job were single.

I think that it takes a while for society to change when laws/rules change.

So I can well believe just a few short years after a rule changing, there being an unofficial rule you had to leave and making it very difficult for you if you didn't.

A big chunk of my baby group was made redundant within 2 years of giving birth. Again this isn't meant to happen and there was no way of proving it was pregnancy related as that is illegal, but it's a known issue with action groups trying to raise awareness.

Things might have been the law but companies took no notice. Knowing no one would rock the boat with inconvenient law suits

Glad I was in a union when I worked in local government. No way would anyone have got away with that.

I worked in local government, we had excellent union support and no way would the local authority I worked for have tried anything like that. We aren't talking about some small dodgy empoyer here, there are national agreements. I'm surprised that people would be so passive about it but then again how many women found it convenient to say they had to give up work?

These were private companies rather than an LA. I appreciate you were talking about the marriage bar in the LA, but i was just moving on to how society can lag.

A lot of employers dont recognise a union and people know going to tribunal can impact on future job prospects.

Oh you sweet summer child!

Plenty of companies and organisations downgrade/regrade women's jobs when they return from mat leave. Or make them redundant. Or manoeuvre them out. You'd have to be incredibly naive to think it doesn't happen to thousands of women right now in 2024 and to realise that it happened even more in years gone past.

You've just been lucky. Surely you are aware that not all employers are decent and law-abiding, and that even if they are, there are still plenty of ways of getting rid of staff you no longer wish to retain (and pregnant women / new mothers are especially vulnerable).

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/sep/12/can-uk-avoid-national-debt-almost-tripling-over-next-50-years

The OBR had a go yesterday at 50 year predictions:

-Government debt rising to 274% of GDP
...
-Public spending accounting for well over half the economy’s annual output
...
-The population of the UK is projected to increase by more than 13 million people – from 68 million to 82 million – by 2070, with two-thirds of this change among those aged 65 or older. That’s the age at which health costs for each person start to rise sharply.

-As a result of these demographic changes, public health spending is expected to almost double – from 7.6% of GDP today to 14.5% in 50 years’ time. Pension spending, assuming the triple lock remains in place, rises from 5.2% of GDP to 7.9%.

It won't happen quite like that because tax and spend will change over 50 years.

However by 50 year all the baby boomer will be gone and we will still have issue of increasingly aging population with associated health and pension costs.

My DMum was let go in the 1970s due to pg - her being kept on after marriage was considered a concession to her - she was secretary in a local firm. I don't think it was uncommon occurrence. Dsis and I encountered issues as well and found it best to move on. - https://pregnantthenscrewed.com/ is still a thing else no-one would have needed to set up a support group.

You take your death pill at age 70 and off you go.

I missed my turn! Does that mean I can just live forever?

I started work in the 60s and never knew anyone who had to give up work because they got married. Pregnancy was a different issue and many places were unsupportive to say the least.

The post I was responding to was about having to give up work on marriage not because of pregnancy. So you patronising child maybe read before you comment?

@Seymour5 was referencing a job in a LA, I worked in a LA and know that the marriage bar was lifted years before she was talking about. We had a powerful union and they wouldn't have stood for this.

I suppose we just have to be grateful that sine women did fight it for the benefit of the women who followed them.