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.

The names given to different generations is covered well in the podcast Origin Story, series 4 episode 3 (about Baby Boomers very generally).

@LargeSquareRock I've been wondering this too lately and it sounds like our parents are similar ages. Our generation definitely has fewer children and among my childfree (all by choice) friends, there are discussions starting about living together in old age to avoid the loneliness of care homes, perhaps intergenerational (eg offering low cost housing to young families in exchange for a sort of community care arrangement). As for repurposing existing 'later living' buildings and housing, that should be possible except that the locations typically tend to be other than where young renters want to be.

Certainly an interesting topic and thanks for starting the thread!

So sorry to hear that in a few decades people who are currently in their seventies may be DEAD

I get what you are asking OP. My mother lives in a village in a valley where the majority of homes are owned by people in their 60s-80s. They mostly all bought their homes 30 years ago when it was relatively affordable, don't tend to downsize or move away. It's a lovely place to live, houses are very expensive because they come available so rarely, and so it tends to be only very wealthy people who can move there.

But in the last couple of years, I can think of three neighbours who have died & their properties have come on the market. You'd expect that to happen more frequently over the next decade or so - so homes in this location become available more frequently. So do the homes in that location stay at £1m+ values that they have at the moment, or do they drop because there's more "supply" on the market? How many people in their 30s and 40s have the budget to pay current values? It's the same situation in all the other little villages up and down the valley - there will be a big demographic shift there over the next 20 years.

Ditto dh and I. Plenty of old farts/bags still pay tax!

This will be a very gradual thing, they ain't going to all drop dead at once, many boomers have already departed life early and the rest will die between ages of 70 to 100 mostly (born 1946 - 64) so that would be spread over about 50 years so plenty of time for gradual changes. Younger people will live longer and want more and more expensive health care. Personalised cancer drugs, dementia treatments, gene therapies and every sort of new medical breakthroughs, medical costs will continue to rise beyond any possibility of the health service coping. Many boomers will have had one or two children and maybe three GCs on average who will inherit any property, more one and two person families will live in individual houses as the birth rate drops, and over time excess stock, if any, will fall into disrepair, hopefully some of the worst property areas will be bulldozed. Many excess jobs have already been automated and that will continue. Things will carry on much the same it is not going to be some sort of bonanza for their GCs or GGCs.

Yes you will be. It’s not personal. I’ll be dead in 50-60 years.

Surely people have intellectual curiosity though, that passes beyond their time on Earth?

I’m fascinated, absolutely fascinated at the world my kids and grandkids will experience in 50 years, even though I won’t be here. I don’t get upset thinking or talking about it.

it will look much like society now with the haves and the have not and everything in between.

From where I'm sitting, having worked my whole life, still a tax payer and fully self sufficient I find your idea that the younger generation are a benevolent lot providing for me rather offensive.

it’s just factual to state tax is paid forward 🤦‍♀️

Not entirely answering your question but I think that (in the U.K. anyway) Gen Z life expectancy will be lower than the current average. Don’t get me wrong all generations have issues with obesity, and lead sedentary lifestyles but I see lots of younger people and children unfortunately that are fat and unhealthy. These early choices are difficult to reverse as we get older.

So sorry to hear that in a few decades people who are currently in their seventies may be DEAD

How dare you say something so evil! I’ve paid tax & I’m not obese, I will live forever!

I suspect...

• housing will even out a bit, of the 4 bed detached family homes on my parents street about 25% are owned by boomers with no kids.

• healthcare won't improve, post boomers there will be fewer elderly patients but more younger patients with heart attack/stroke/diabetes.

• I suspect gen x inheriters will step up to the plate in terms of charity/community/volunteering during retirement. I wonder if govt will try to take more on so fewer charities are needed.

• wealth will be really polarised between the inheriters and the bootstrappers.

• we will increasingly rely on immigration to do the shittier jobs in society. I wonder if we will see an easy to obtain care/key worker visa for people from certain countries.

I think most people here get that, but on MN the term Baby Boomer is most definitely a slur. That’s why you’re getting grief.

Any of us could be dead tomorrow, it's not only boomers that die.

Why do you think that, though?

Society now looks radically different to 50 years ago. The types of jobs people have and how much they earn for those jobs. Family make up (age of marriage; number of kids; one vs two parents working full time as the norm; legal non-hetero marriage). The internet. Electric cars. Artificial Intelligence! The gutting of the NHS (or Medicare), university funding, pension systems. The warming planet.

Do you really believe that in 50 years things will be where they are now?

Re housing, the passing of the 'baby boomer' group wouldn't make more properties available to people struggling to buy somewhere, as their properties would still be out of the reach of those struggling and maybe even not suitable.

My understanding is that one of the main problems re housing is to do with relatively young people wanting to buy a flat or small house within a reasonable distance of where they work and then discovering that their salaries are too low to make even the tiniest studio flat possible.

Older people are probably living in larger properties which would be out of the beginners' reach if they came on the market.

Even though our DPs pay tax because of their private pensions, their state pension is paid from the working population.

All four of our parents were very fortunate enough to be retired by 60, neither DM worked outside of the home. I just do not know how I'm going to work 40 hours + with travel and commuting until I'm 67.

There is a birth dearth. I have no idea how a smaller working population will support future pensions.

At the moment we have the largest number of retirees ever and the ratio of pensioners to working people and that is unsustainable. Hopefully, when the baby boomers die off , things will get easier for younger generations, but the next 20 years are going to be really hard for millenials and gen zs. Yes, there are tax paying pensioners - but these guys are also getting £11.5k a year handout each from the government paid for out of working people taxes. Older people are also the biggest burden on the health service.

Younger people, who are already unlikely to be able to buy their own homes, who are paying back student loans all their lives, are also going to be taxed to the hilt to pay for the old people's maintenance. The youngest boomers are just 60. We have at least another 20 years of this before we start to see any redress of balance. Hopefully when it comes, millenials, gen zs and gen alphas will get some relief in their old age with a less costly ratio of elderly to working adults. There is no way anyone in these age groups can adequately save for a pension like today's boomers have been able to, so hopefully the state will be able to offer more support by then.

It’s interesting re health & younger generations as there has been a big decline in drinking alcohol.

“While youth drinking has been falling steadily, consumption among older people has not changed at the same rate. People aged 55-64 are more likely than anyone else to drink at higher risk levels, and are least likely not to drink at all.”

Not all tax is income tax/NI. Everyone also pays VAT for example, most people pay council tax, and also maybe petrol tax, road tax, and alcohol/tobacco duty.

One thing is guaranteed, taxes will keep going up!

And my intellectual curiosity will still be there till I draw my last breath, on fatal multi car crash on Redlynch Connection Road on the school run tomorrow morning. (Hope I haven’t jinxed myself)

yes in financial terms I do. There has always been the rich, the comfortable and the poor in society and though we see more extremes at times the basic set up.remains because time and chance affect us all. You can be lucky and win the lottery etc or become disabled and fall into.poverty. Some will inherit and wealth moves down the generations but some will not and they are already on the back foot. Life is not a level playing field as we all know

Life expectancy will continue to increase. it is a complicated story. White indigenous Brits are def living longer. [Seat belts, better survivability after collision, less smoking]

Migrants are living longer here than in the country of origin but many groups are a few years behind our experience.
Around 2000 there was an increase in TB in Tower Hamlets, brought in by unvaccinated immigrants. There is also a reservoir of African descent with Sickle Cell Anemia. Many men still smoke heavily.
These are affecting fractionally the Borough and London wide statistics.
Again IMO.

@TheSquareMile

My understanding is that one of the main problems re housing is to do with relatively young people wanting to buy a flat or small house within a reasonable distance of where they work and then discovering that their salaries are too low to make even the tiniest studio flat possible.

I don't know if you mean it that way, but you make it sound like the fault of young people wanting to live near work. With the centralisation of decent jobs into London/SE and a handful of other big cities, most won't have a choice if they want a decent job. Certainly those living in the run down regions, towns and cities HAVE to move to where the jobs are. You're not going to find many head office banking jobs or actuarial jobs in Cumbria! Graduates often have the "choice" of staying in their home areas, living at home, and having to take minimum wage jobs in retail or hospitality, thus wasting their degrees, OR moving to London, Bristol, Edinburgh, York, Leeds, Manchester or Birmingham if they want a proper "graduate" job in their chosen profession. When public transport is poor outside London and a couple of other big cities, living close to work is essential, not a lifestyle choice.

Yes a lot of people in their seventies are paying tax, but they're paying systematically less than a younger person would pay on the same income. A forty-something on an average salary pays about £6,250 in tax and NI. A seventy something on the same income pays about £4,500. I assume that's why Jeremy Hunt was trying to ditch NI in favour of stealth increases in income tax and personally I'm all in favour.