Baby boom generation starting to retire in or around 2030

swampgas

It's an interesting subject.

It seems to me that the fundamental issue is that the government has far, far less power than people think. It doesn't get to tell people how many children to have, or when to have them. It can't stop people emigrating, although it has some control over immigration. It can't make people want to get married, or want to have children, nor can it stop people having 10 children if they want to. It can't make people downsize, or make older people move in with their children. All it can do is tinker with tax and social welfare, in a feeble attempt to nudge things one way or the other. Nor does the government get to control what happens in the outside world, not does it have a crystal ball to predict the future. Most politicians are just desperately trying to get reelected, i.e. trying to keep their job while providing for themselves and their families. Rocking the boat is not a good strategy for most of them.

When I was leaving school in the 80s, Ireland was a poor country with too many young people chasing too few jobs. Everybody was leaving, myself included. Who could have predicted the 90s, the celtic tiger, the financial crisis, Covid, etc?

If you had told me then that 40 years later adults in their 30s would be living with their parents, I would have struggled to believe it.

When the EU accession states were given access there was a massive influx of people, but who (at the time) was prepared to put the brakes on, when it seemed the economy had never been so good? Who could have predicted how many would stay, or many would return to their home country? Who would have predicted Brexit?

Governments are made of people not that different from the voters who elect them. They tend to be cautious, and to react slowly instead of boldly. If they try anything too ambitious or progressive the voters will easily turn on them.

And the people themselves are not exactly blameless, as they want multiple contradictory things.

They want to own their own house and not have the government tell them it's under-utilised, nor to pay anything more than a token amount of property tax - it's their house, their castle, they paid for it, so f*ck off. If they have managed to buy multiple houses they want to be able to rent them or leave them empty as they see fit. If the government suggests something that might cause property prices to fall, half the country is delighted and the other half is horrified.

People don't want to pay much inheritance tax, they want their own family, and only their own family, to benefit from any accumulated wealth. Yet they complain about income tax.

Most of the problems we are seeing are simply emergent behaviour. The root causes of those problems are the economic model and culture and neither of those are going to change in a hurry. If we want anything to be dramatically different, we will have to change how we think, and change what we value, and be prepared to make some sacrifices. And deep down, most people simply don't want to change. They want other people to change. Other people to pay more tax, or leave their houses, or whatever, to solve the problems they themselves are facing.

Are we, as a county, prepared (for example) to pay much more property tax? To (hypothetically) have our houses or land CPO'd with fewer restrictions? To pay way more inheritance tax? To have big financial penalties for leaving a house empty? If not, then maybe we are not being realistic about what "the government" can do to improve things.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122028017#Comment_122028017

No that is not "literally" what she said. She actually started out by acknowledging that she was not in a stable relationship with a potential father until a year ago.

I only met someone I could even contemplate having children with in the last year.

There are so many significant aspects of that one piece of information alone that it's clear that it's not just about housing or even about money.

And TBH, even if she'd posted nothing more than "My partner and I have wanted a baby since we were 20, and still cannot afford one" that would still be only a personal testimony, and would not invalidate data studies that name all sorts of reasons than just "money" or housing. Because, as they say, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122032612#Comment_122032612

Quote…

The financial aspects of having children are really concerning to me. I already worry about money so much. If my house had cost even 20-30% less than it did, and I didn't have to take out a home improvement loan, this wouldn't matter so much. Everything comes back to the astronomical cost of housing. Then you add creche fees and all the items kids need on top of that, and it's really worrying. I feel less well off on a day-to-day basis at 36 than I did at 26, and I think that's the case for lots of people.

Everything comes back to the astronomical cost of housing.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122032403#Comment_122032403

Are you suggesting that people shouldn't have the reasonable expectation of settling down where they grew up? I think you've over simplified here. You can learn a trade, sure but those often entail very hard physical labour. That's neither suitable for everyone nor viable in the long term. Second, you might learn to be an electrician but that doesn't mean you'll make it in somewhere like Romania or Hungary without connections or the language.

Greyfox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122032391#Comment_122032391

We don't all get what we want. Many 75 year olds who rent will have to work at least part time so survive. I

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122028017#Comment_122028017

You, literally, have a woman telling you on this thread that affordability is foremost in her mind with regards to having a child. And her sentiments are echoed by others, including people I know.

Yes, let's believe random anecdotes and commentry online and ignore all the independent studies done on this topic.

Brilliant!

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122033036#Comment_122033036

You'll only believe what you want to believe.

But whether you accept it or not, many people will cite cost as being the prohibiting factor on whether they have babies or not.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122032647#Comment_122032647

LOL.

One word that contradicts the rest of the post, as well as data from around the world, but agrees with what you want to hear.

i could ask you to explain how the cost of housing has stopped her meeting someone until last year but what’s the point.

anewme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122032885#Comment_122032885

If people are not given their state pension till 75, you will see a lot of people opt to live their lives on social and never work, especially thise now in lower middle class, who effectively earn the same as those on welfare when everything is factored in.

CelticRambler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122032698#Comment_122032698

Well, it's another one of those recently embraced "have it all" situations that comes at a cost. If we want to enjoy the freedom to pack our bags, jump on a plane and head off somewhere else to find our fortune, then we create the conditions needed for someone else to come in and take the place we've vacated, and can hardly complain about them if they do. If settling down where we grew up is really that important to us, then we should understand the risk of leaving, and perhaps choose not to leave.

There's a lot of whinging across several threads here about adult children still living with their parents - but isn't that the ultimate "settling down where I grew up" scenario? And what's wrong with it? There are numerous advantages to both the parents and the child/ren in such an arrangement, especially if money that would otherwise have been spent on rent or mortgage interest can be invested in extending and improving the family home. That's how most of our societies worked in the past, and it led (generally) to strong local communities. Those who found the tradition too oppressive got up and left, often never to return, but frequently made a great new life for themselves somewhere else.

Somewhat along the same lines, though, there's no hard-and-fast rule that any community can/must/will survive in a particular area for more than a few generations. Traipsing around the backwaters of Europe, I've come across dozens of ghost towns where the information board features a phrase along the lines of "… was once a flourishing centre for …" And then circumstances changed - sometimes short-sighted and self-inflicted, sometimes bigger picture stuff - and everyone left for a better future in some other place. That's what humans do.

So no, I don't think the unconditional expectation of settling down where one grew up is reasonable: it's something else that has to be traded off against professional, financial, emotional and other aspirations.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122033364#Comment_122033364

I didn't realise that having the same lifestyle as the previous generation was "having it all". We're talking about one of the most basic things a person needs, a home.

To be honest, this just reads like a justification of boomer greed. Reminds me of the guff libertarians used to spout here that as long as the one percenters and corporations are happy, that's all that matters.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122032698#Comment_122032698

No generation in history has ever had he reasonable expectation of settling down where they grew up. The eldest son inherited the farm, the rest of the 10 children had to find a way elsewhere, that was 19th century Ireland.

For most of the 20th century, the same prevailed, as Irish people took the boat. This continued up until the early 1990s. Even when people did stay in Ireland, places like Finglas, Ballybrack, Tallaght and before them, Cabra, Drimnagh and Whitehall were new communities and people moved out to those locations.

The amount of land is finite, the number of people is not, so the only solution is for people to keep moving outwards and/or onwards. The amount of available land for development in Dublin City Council area or in Dun Laoghaire is very small, non-existent for typical semi-detached houses, with only apartments likely there.

To sum up, in a growing population, it is impossible for any other than a tiny minority (most of whom's parents die young and leave them the house) to hold the reasonable expectation of settling down where they grew up.

I was born in the mid-1960s in well-off South Dublin, I own a house in Dublin 15 (not Castleknock).

CelticRambler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122033581#Comment_122033581

That's just it, though: the previous generation (or the one before, depending on one's age) didn't have the option of cheap commutes over long distances, quick-and-easy travel back home from their career-enhancing jobs abroad, and an expectation of changing jobs and relationship partners every decade.

Our lives today are not those of our parents or grandparents, and for the most part we are all very glad of that - but so much of what we expect for the future is based on what they had, i.e. the past we've chosen to move on from.

Referring back to the "having babies" topic, I know of some families who have chosen to stop at three children because that's as many as you can fit in the back of a normal car. We didn't have that limitation when I was growing up, and there are still countries where you can stuff half a dozen sprogs into a Ford Escort (equivalent) … and probably afford a house too. But is that the lifestyle that you want?

It's all about compromises and priorities, and even though yes, one of the most basic requirements for anyone is to have a home, there are a thousand definitions of what constitutes a "home". The more conditional are ones expectations (same road I grew up on, three indoor toilets, south-facing garden, within walking distance of a decent sized Supervalu, easy drive to the airport for maximum Ryanair bargain flights … ) the more one should expect to compromise - especially if that also means buying in the kind of highly competitive, lightly regulated, easy-debt-fueled housing market that the Irish electorate has chosen to perpetuate.

It doesn't have to be like that, but it is. When I realised twenty years ago I couldn't change a damn thing about it, I voted with my feet, followed the path of the Wild Geese and gave my stamp duty to the French government instead of Fianna Fáil. I doubt that was really any different, psychologically, than my father moving from the extreme west of Clare to the centre of Dublin in the 1960s.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122033684#Comment_122033684

Yes, this is the thing I've been trying to get over: the idea that we can all live better than our parents, while still being able to pick things from their lives that we'd quite like to keep is not realistic. It's not even a realistic view of the past. It seems to be some sort of view of 1950s America applied to Ireland - and even in America it was only ever true for some sections of society, basically those who managed to get into the white middle-class suburban part of it.

I suppose growing up in Derry where the legacy of two, three or more FAMILIES having to live in the same two or three bedroom house was still only in the process of being solved when I was young may help explain why I'm so sceptical of this poormouthing about how terrible it is today - but I don't believe the west of Ireland or working class Dublin was that much better. When I went to university in Dublin in the 80s I saw a lot of visible poverty - and if it struck me as looking poor compared to Derry, then it was not just relative poverty.

(TBF I think it was socially divided, rather than poor overall - the wealthy parts of Dublin were of course very wealthy. But Sheriff Street, the North Wall, Gardiner Street or Dolphins Barn were very obviously poor.)

super_furry

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122014424#Comment_122014424

Wait, what? I'm a Millennial? Always thought I was Gen X.

****, this changes everything. Get me some skinny jeans and a skateboard now!

CelticRambler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122033739#Comment_122033739

As a relative outsider looking in, I think the returned emigrants of the Celtic Tiger years brought a lot of "WASP"-ish attitudes back from the anglophone countries to which they'd gone off, and I'm not sure those were a great fit for the Irish psyche - which I would describe as being much more aligned with the "sure-it'll-be-grand" attitude of the Mediterranean countries. I don't think it was coincidence that we were all lumped together as "PIIGS" during the bailout years.

A couple of decades on, though, I'd nearly go so far as to say that the other members of that group have recovered their traditional culture in a way that hasn't happened in Ireland, and that's despite them having an "immigration problem" that's way worse than Ireland.

The key difference I see comes back to the money markets, and the Irish willingness - almost determination - to borrow as much as they can possibly get (not afford) just to outbid their own kind … and then blame it on the banks, on Angela Merkel, on the government of the day, for causing it to happen. This is also why I don't see any Irish government bringing meaningful change to the sale of property - because anything meaningful would (should) have a significant negative effect on house prices, and that'd be too bitter a pill for any voter to swallow when they still have 20 years of a 500k mortgage to pay off.

And yet, for a country that was so characterised by emigration and literally founding and building towns and cities of other countries around the world for more than a thousand years, "Gen X/Y/Z" has suddenly developed a fierce aversion to leaving the comfort zone of Modern Ireland (and ex-pat enclaves).

So much easier to complain (in English) about not being able to afford a house without a 500k mortgage, and having to work full time till 65 to pay for it, than to learn another language and buy a house for 50k somewhere not-in-Ireland; and then be debt-free and semi-retired from the age of 45.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122033767#Comment_122033767

I don't know where that poster got their info from, but most people place the Millennials as ranging between 1981 and 1996. 1977-80 is still a Gen X'er.

So back into yer old clothes and put that skateboard away.

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122022736#Comment_122022736

Food isnt overpriced...ye feckers are getting that way too cheap!

yagan

All this borrowing from elsewhere of demographic pigeonholes won't change much in Ireland when we're face with our own aged care challenges.

I can chime with a lot of posters who remember the 70s and 80s when few would have predicted a positive economic future, which was the fruit of the Whitikar reforms in the 1960s and later the progressive emphasis on teaching sciences in school.

I think the lax planning policies of the boom era will be a negative drag in the future when it comes to providing aged care services. I'm typical of that era with an average number of siblings for the time who could share the load when keeping our parents in the home place for as long as possible, but we all know that in our dotage we simply will not be able to rely on family like before.

Interestingly I'm in the process of getting the mother in laws house ready for sale and the estate agent is saying that these particular council tce houses near shops and transport from almost a century ago which were overlooked during the boom era are becoming increasingly popular again with people wanting to move away from their car dependent situations. It's ironic that many probably grew up in such houses.

The options aren't great for aged independent living otherwise, once you lose your ability to drive the next stop option often is a nursing home as there's very few assisted living developments where you could keep some independence, and a lot of nursing homes seem to be out in the countryside where walking the road is too dangerous.

Dealing with our parents certainly has influenced where we live now, in that if one of got too sick to drive we could still walk to the shop, pharmacy by ourselves. In time we know we'd have to downsize when even basic gardening gets too much. We just hope that there's some good options in time for that phase.

Basically the point of this post is that some people make provision now for needs in future decades because they know governments only think in short term election cycles, until there's a crisis. I do think aged care will become so massive a crisis across all advanced economies that they'll be competing for immigrants rather than entertaining anti immigrant sentiment which is popular right now.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122034455#Comment_122034455

You are absolutely right, and there will be a price paid for the people who wanted to live their lives on top of mountains in the middle of nowhere, far from services. As the population gets older, the only efficient way to provide services will be in towns and cities. Living at the end of a boreen isn't practical.

SharkMX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122032403#Comment_122032403

Of all my close friends and acquaintances, none of the ones who did a masters or higher own their own house now we are in our 30s. Some of us who left college at about 21 or 22 own houses now. Every one of them who did an apprenticeship or got married in their early 20s now owns a house or apartment.

Time spent in education is definitely a factor from what I can see.

Peregrinus

Time spent in education delays the start of your full-time earning career, obviously, and equally it delays progress up the ladder of experience and earnings. But it's also associated with higher earnings, and in particular higher peak earnings, and on average it increases overall career earnings — i.e. the effect of the later start is more than outweighed by higher earnings later on. But:

1. You may be unfortunate that the years when your earnings are delayed/lower coincide with a rapid change in, e.g., house prices. If house prices undergo an irreversible step-change upwards relative to earnings in those years, you may find that you can never afford the housing that those who entered the workforce just a few years before you were able to afford. But:
2. If that happens, it's a transitional thing. It affects those who were in further education or in early-career lower earnings while the house price change was actually happening. It doesn't mean that the next cohort will be further disadvantaged by spending more time in education, or that they can avoid the problem of higher house prices by not spending time in education. Spending time in eduction will only further impede house purchase if house prices continue to rise, relative to earnings. If house prices fall relative to earnings or just keep pace with earnings then, once again, time spend in further education will tend to result in housing being more affordable to you, not less affordable.

fuzzy dunlop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122035275#Comment_122035275

Good Post.Expect a lot of the problems in the future from areas that saw urban dwellers choose one off housing over more modest urban/suburban housing. There are two types of people who did this (in my experience),those are the "sustainable living" types and the "grand design types". I know a couple of the former and I was always left with the impression that they are miscalculating.For example moving to a remote part of West Cork and then having to buy a diesel car because they are in the middle of nowhere!If they really wanted to work towards net zero they would just but an apartment or house in town and insulate it well. The 'grand design' types that I know just wanted a big house status symbol which may well become totally unpractical in their dotage.And they all complain about broadband and schools and expect the same services two miles outside of Castlepollard that someone in the middle of a large town or city has.

fuzzy dunlop

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122033581#Comment_122033581

Here we go again with the boomer greed! Boomer means something specific and it is not literal. We don't have them in Ireland. A huge amount of the population in Ireland well into the 80s lived in sub standard housing by today's standards. And even those who got mortgages in the late 80's and into the mid nineties often had to navigate punishingly high interest rates. I got burned badly in the crash of 2008 and some of my peers took their own lives.Many others became depressed and never recovered fully from it. Several colleagues who bought relatively cheaply in places like Portlaoise and Carlow realized they didn't want to live their lives in those places and gave over their entire redundancies to walk away from the mortgages. What your doing is trying to direct blame on to someone who doesn't deserve it. Your argument is fallacious because it amounts to 'We need to tax the f#ck out of that generation so my generation can live like that generation.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122037439#Comment_122037439

Exactly, and the sustainable living types are particularly strange. Growing a few vegetables on a half-acre site doesn't cancel all of the other climate disadvantages of living in a remote location.

Thinking down the road to when I am retired, need to be within thirty minutes of a hospital and walking distance of public transport.

CelticRambler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122037213#Comment_122037213

The published data seems to confirm that (highter earnings associated with higher income), but even though I can't see any significant holes in the data, I can't reconcile it with what I see in real life. Of my four children, one has a masters, one has no third level education and the other two have unvarnished undergraduate degrees. The one earning the most is the one with no third level education; the one with the most secure accomodation and relationship status is the one who shoved his masters down the back of the sofa and opted to follow his low-paid childhood dream job instead.

And when I look across the full spectrum of my children's peers - nephews, nieces, classmates, and random young people in my own social circle - there doesn't appear to be any association between third level education and "quality of life" … unless it's an inverse relationship.

I would be inclined to the opinion that the positive correlation we've been told about (with proof!) is based on out-of-date models, and the picture will change over the next decade. To some extent, I would also be inclined to believe that that's due to government and educational institutions pushing this "study more, earn more" attitude in recent past decades and treating all third level education as having the same value.

Moreover, it seems to feed the "you can do better if you just wait a bit longer" narrative that pushes all of the traditional "becoming an adult" rites of passage into later and later years, with few of the promises ever being fully delivered.

CelticRambler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122037701#Comment_122037701

That's a bit simplistic. The average age of death where I live, down the end of a "boreen" in the middle of nowhere is approximately 85 for the men and 90 for the women. Most of them are still pottering about in their vegetable patch until the day they die. That might be all they do, and it might take them three days to weed a line of carrots, but they're generally well able to hold a conversation and keep themselves upright. Home care goes a long way towards that, and I wouldn't have opted for the same kind of lifestyle if I didn't believe that eating zero-carbon-miles carrots with some of the dirt still on contributes to their good long mental and physical health.

This is another societal question: is there the willingness on the part of local politicians and the electorate to pay for or deliver the kind of basic infrastructure or community services that'd make living in a rural environment a valid alternative to city dwelling? In Ireland, I don't think so. There's too much grá for the big house, the big car, the big salary … Having more children or longer working lives or bigger pensions won't change that.

swampgas

Another point on time spent in education, especially for people doing post-grad work, is that it can significantly delay the start of a full time permanent position, which can impact pensions. If combined with stints abroad gaining experience, it can mean that contributions to pension schemes start later. Someone who does a degree, a masters, a PhD, then a few years postdoc gaining experience may (if they are lucky) finally secure a permanent position in their late twenties or early thirties, and this may be the point at which the pension contributions start to count. (As far as I know anyway - this is how it was described to me by a friend who went down this route.)

Someone who started work in a permanent job aged 21 will have their 40 years done at 61/62 years of age, someone who "starts" at 31 will only have 36 years contributions by age 67.

It will be interesting to see how the correlation between education and salary trends over the next decade - if I live long enough to see it :)

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122037991#Comment_122037991

Regarding those in their 80s and 90s living well independent does chime with what the head of my mothers nursing home told me about those who grew up without car dependency, they were generally stronger for it whereas the following generations tend to not be as robust and require more intervention and attention.

My own grandmother lived without indoor plumbing until her 90s and grew her own veg.

Perhaps that's part of what being noted in the US with declining life expectancy. The opioid crisis may be the headline, but perhaps a general decline in underlying core health may be a contributary factor in driving people towards legal painkiller dependency.

SharkMX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122037213#Comment_122037213

Or by the time you are bidding on your house with yourself and your other half at the peak of your college increased earnings, you are bidding high and contributing to house price increases