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.

Let’s also not forget cash in hand jobs were everywhere
needed some cash, look after your neighbours kids, you’d get an evening job in a pub or cleaning. They don’t really exist anymore.

@Shakenandstirredup It's from the same HMRC study that sky news quoted. It was in my history yesterday but I delete that often, you'll have to find it yourself.

It really shouldn't be "optional" as to whether you work or not unless you're seriously disabled or too young/too old or can genuinely provide for yourself. If you don't like your job, you apply for others and put up with it in the meantime. Living on benefits whether for a week, a month, a year or a decade shouldn't be a lifestyle choice if you're able to work.

As for the "dig a hole" thing, isn't that exactly what successive governments have done by expanding the public sector with so much duplication, so many "none" jobs, etc. There was a time before NHS England when the NHS seemed to function better. There was a time before all the NHS Trusts were created where the NHS seemed to function better. We really shouldn't be creating "paper shuffling" nor "manager arranging endless meetings" types of jobs in the public sector just for the sake of giving people jobs. It's really no different to the dig a hole type of madness.

As for "get a new job in the afternoon", did that time ever exist? Try telling that to miners, shipbuilders, car factory workers, and in fact basically all "manual" productive workers (mills, factories, etc) in the 70s and 80s when the vast majority of our manufacturing base collapsed and entire villages, towns and cities were plunged into massive levels of unemployment. Good luck if you were a miner in a mining village in the 70s or 80s to try to find another job the day after your mine closed down! Decades later, such places still have massive unemployment and social problems!

@Badbadbunny

I graduated in '83, at the same point that Dad was coming up for retirement. I recall trying to get onto management training programmes for various retail outlets who wanted graduates, only to be told that I was overqualified: they only wanted people with ordinary degrees.

I went to my local Job Centre to seek help (a coalmining area) and the pinstripe suited manager asked in his plummiest voice "Doo yooou have any qualifications?"

"Yes..."

"What dooo yoooou have?"

"An honours degree in..."

"Jesus Christ, hen! We cannae dae onything fur you!"

I was fortunate. I managed to get onto a PGCE course at the last minute and my Local Authority had an opening for me. (In those days, you were given preference in your home region.)

More retired boomer's pay income tax than generation z according to official data. | Mumsnet

This is the other thread on a similar topic.

For @Shakenandstirredup

The state pension for those retiring prior to 2016 isn’t £11k. It’s £169.50 a week, or just under £9k. Younger pensioners £221 a week. Around £50 a week more.

As an older pensioner I seem to have to point this out every time state pensions get a mention.

www.gov.uk/browse/working/state-pension

That poster also appears not to know that policing comes out of council tax.

It isn’t actually. You should try using it and then maybe you will find out…

It will also be UC because supplementary benefit and income support were far less generous as income top ups for the low paid than UC.

That would have been the mid 1970s. Not long after that the first teacher took maternity leave after it became a statutory entitlement. It felt quite revolutionary when she returned a few months later.

There was no statutory entitlement to maternity pay until 1987.

Although it is certainly not a source of "knowledge" anyone should consider accurate without thoroughly checking its results against established reliable sources.

Well she would have to have told them wouldn’t she ? Otherwise how would they have been able to pay her tax and NI?

And does it include putting back into the system every asset they own to pay for elderly care when they need it ?

I read they'd be a slow % decrease in housing costs year on year as deamnd fell - but that was before they were predicting another 5-10 million in population from immigration in next decade.

It's not a one shot issue - every generation got smaller - plus as parental age has got older the gap between generations has increased as well. Plus as PP have said next geneation poor pensions and fewer home owners. It's also happen world wide at a more rapid pace - so how that affetc immigration levels - and geopoltical poltics will also factor in.

We had kids slightly later - but still relatively young - plus given house prices and rent kids more likley to boomerag back - so we'll have fewer children free years to build savings - though same time expect to work much longer. Whether unlike parent generation employers will have caught up with that - or if we too will be facing career changes post reducancy in mid 50s as our parents did.

Over 20 years though hard to predict.

Birth rates seem on a decline so schools and child/maternity service will decline and may have to travel further to access - hard to say what immigration will be as that depends on world factors and government polices. Tax system depends on government policy - which partly depends on world factors and partly on what electroate will tolerate - that will impact a lot including birth rates.

I'm not sure if NHS will still be a thing or if we'll shift to some insurance and safety net thing like Europe/most of the world.

I've started to see articles and public musings about making state pension means tested - no idea if that will happen.

No idea what industry/services the UK will have - two areas we grew up in had differenet manufactoring bases and one of our parents worked for biggest local employer - and not even by end of their working lives that was all gone.

I vaguely remember a couple of girls in school who would get pregnant towards the end of year 11, spend a few months in a mother and baby hostel and soon enough they'd get a council flat. As soon as they'd secured the council flat they'd them sign over guardianship rights to their parents (baby's grandparents) because they "couldn't cope". Then they'd have a 2 bedroom flat all to themselves. No bedroom tax in those days either.