Baby boom generation starting to retire in or around 2030

I think some people are confusing overall population figures with a spike in people having babies.

but this is because you tried to do this alone

you are competing against all those people who get married at 28 30 etc

people also want to live a life and this costs money. A life unlike what your parents in the 70/80s lived

this is the trade off

if you were only thinking off kids at 36 in the 1980s youd have been looked quare, and theres a reason for this

even now thats way 5 6 years behind the curve and the curve is not that long

The basic expectation of having your own roof over your head and popping out a kid or two. These things weren't beyond most people's expectations in life.

And, again, I'm not talking about 1913 here.

There are three major ticking time bombs waiting to go off in this country. Housing, Health and pensions. And they're going to blow up in a lot of people's faces.

Well put, and you're in the same predicament as lot of my friends.

And then we look at whats coming along well behind the boomers - GEN Z .. I despair :D

What country is the Queen of England from? ANS - watch the vid :D

Ireland did have a baby boom.

Starting at 1940, and peaking at 1965.

Similar to many Western countries.

The ability to afford children is the main reason why there are lower birth rates.

No, that is not what the studies show.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#:~:text=Factors%20generally%20associated%20with%20decreased,lesser%20degree)%20increased%20male%20age.

Factors generally associated with decreased fertility include wealth, education,[74][75][76] female labor participation,[77] urban residence,[78] intelligence, increased female age, women's rights, access to family planning services and (to a lesser degree) increased male age. 

Now, you can point me to a study that refutes that wealth, education, female labour participation, family planning and so on as lesser to the ability to afford to have children, then perhaps I will consider it. Remember, you said its the "main" reason.

I'm not engaging in any nostalgia. I'm merely stating a fact.

No, it's an opinion, not a fact.

I've already told you. Successive government attitudes have let free market thinking absorb everything, to the point where prices for goods have become absurd and the ability to pay for those goods are gaping wider and wider. This has been a trend for quite some time. The more things cost, the more people get priced out of paying for them. This applies to having children as well.

So when did this happen exactly? You are grossly over simplying it, as the same trends are seen worldwide, from Ireland to Canada to Japan to South Korea to Brazil and even places like South Africa and Algeria.

Are all these governments everywhere just really bad at their job?

Not enough. Not even remotely enough.

I would somewhat agree, but the charge was that we don't build any. So clearly the charge is false.

There is a habit of catastrophizing everything the government does. They cant do anything right and is always wrong.

Anyway a corner has been turned on housing, that I am sure of.

No, it bloody well wasn't. There was never a time before the last few decades where people indebted themselves until they were retirement age just to buy a modest home. Don't be ridiculous.

How long was the average mortgage say 30 years ago?

It was still 25 years, give or take. The difference is that people bought their homes much younger than now, for various reasons and I accept affordability is a factor, but also people stay education longer, travel and so.

This has feck all to do the point being made. And for the record I grew up in a house without central heating.

It does, as you allude to the fact that houses built 50 years ago were of the same standard as today.

Simply put, new builds today are vastly more complicated, insulated, airtight and simply better than the 2 up 2 down stuff built back in the day.

What a young couple buys today is simply much better than what a young couple bought back in the day.

The issue is actually not down to affordability as much, but that there are 2 few new homes being built.

If there were 60,000 new homes being built, it would be a game changer, so lets aim for that and stop the persistent and continuous moaning about everything being crap all the time.

No, that is not what the studies show.

Now, you can point me to a study that refutes that wealth, education, female labour participation, family planning and so on as lesser to the ability to afford to have children, then perhaps I will consider it. Remember, you said its the "main" reason.

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.

Ignore that if you wish. I don't care. But Shelga's sentiments are common.

It's not the fact women are in jobs, it's not the fact that there's contraception available. It's not the bloody Loch Ness monster.

It's the prohibitive COST that's foremost in the mind of people like Shelga and many others.

This is an article about the UK. But it, very much, applies here too.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/01/money-is-putting-off-under-35s-in-the-uk-from-having-kids-how-do-child-benefits-compare-in

"Money is the biggest concern preventing young adults in the UK from starting a family, according to a new survey.

More than half (59 per cent) of respondents cited financial worries as the number one reason why they would consider delaying or deciding not to have children."

"The research, commissioned by Apryl, a Berlin-based fertility benefits company, found that the biggest barrier to parenthood was the rising cost of living, cited by 29 per cent of respondents. It was followed by the cost of childcare (13 per cent), not having met the right partner yet (12 per cent) and not being able to afford to buy their own home (11 per cent)."

There's European countries actually PAYING people to have babies.

Here's another article for you…

https://www.newstalk.com/news/its-a-sum-i-cant-square-young-people-not-having-kids-because-of-cost-1461851

Here's an article from 2015…These financial concerns are nothing new.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/women-in-30s-put-off-having-children-due-to-money-woes/30936630.html

How long was the average mortgage say 30 years ago?

It was still 25 years, give or take.

Now it's 35 years and people can't even think about taking one out until they're much older because the cost of a deposit is so high and takes so long to accumulate. So they end up in debt until they're in their old age.

It does

Central heating has nothing to do with people putting off having kids.

I wouldn't be so quick to blame Fine Gael. Pretty much every country is struggling with this.

Maybe. But as far as this country is concerned FG are to largely blame for where our current crises come from with regards to housing and health. Hey, you know what, chuck FF on the fire too, because they're no better.

I'm convinced that this will only get worse because it can. Like, if someone built 10,000 affordable 2-bed flats in Dublin tomorrow, they'd get hoovered up by hedge funds, vulture funds, and whatever else. The issue is political will as you've said and it's not going to improve.

Agreed. It can, and probably will, get much worse. In fact, the whole thing might go belly up again.

However, the issue is not just more dogboxes, it's homes that people can actually afford without the need to burden themselves with a debt that will still be around their necks when they're OAPs.

Frankly, I think we need to build more state housing, like the way Britain did after the war. State builds them, and you rent from the state.

Not some offshore bastard who's only interest is in their profit.

Highly skilled workers are already emigrating en masse. Australia is taking a load of our doctors and nurses and has moved on to recruiting our experienced Gards. The state launched a campaign to entice builders home. Increasing taxes on wages will only accelerate this exodus and dissuade multinationals from setting up here.

And the people that are left behind to pay these higher taxes will have less disposable income, so will have even less kids.

This sorta reminds me of a conversation I had with my cousin just before Christmas.

He is 42 and his girlfriend is 40 and they have one 5 year old. Its a medical impossibility for them to have ore children so they will only just have one and they had just got this news a few weeks before this conversation happened.

The conversation was full of regret and he was blaming himself for the situation. Some of the tings he said were that he only got started with his life really at 25 years old due to spending so long in education. He then went traveling for a few years and only came home when he was 30. He spent a few years sewing his wild oats using apps for hookups instead of dating. Then he met his gf at work and they went of traveling for a couple of years together. They came came and lived in my aunts for a few years not really saving much or not putting anything into pensions. Then she got pregnant by accident and they moved into a rented apartment. Now they have settled down and they want a house and more children and thy can have neither at this point in their lives.

It was a very tearful night but he was filled with regret about not engaging with life earlier and while he had a great time, the rest of his life is not going to be what he thought it was. I always thought after that conversation the mine and his generations usually do things the opposite way around to what our parents did. We go have a good time first and then struggle in the years when we should be nearly finished getting our nest and children raised (and having to spend 8 - 10 years more than your parents or grand parents did in education doesnt help either.)

Im in my early 30s, got my house recently and next will be children, but ive been putting money into a pension since i got my first job on my fathers advice. Parents generation would have left education much earlier, got married, saved and bought any old fixer upper they could afford. Then had their kids right away whether they could afford them or not (usually not, bu they got by) and then stop having kids, all of who would have been raised by the time they were 40. Got it all out of the way to they could relax in the twilight of their lives. And here is us only thinking about settling down and having kids mid 30s or 40s now. I wish I had of realized that in my early 20s, but it could be worse, at least i realized it a few years ago.

I'm sure you're right. But that's not a problem that will be solved by cutting or freezing the old-age pension or similar measures.

What it might do, at least in theory, is to encourage people who have reached retirement age, who own their own homes (i.e. their mortgage is cleared) and who still have adult children living with them to sell their homes, downsize to something considerably smaller as a retirement home for themselves, and give their kids a big wodge of cash towards the purchase of a home of their own. And if such a trend were to develop it would lead to an increase in the rate at which suitable family homes, as opposed to starter homes for childless young adults, come onto the market.

We've a transitional problem here.

The contributory old-age pension is an insurance scheme. (Hence the name "social insurance".) The risk that people face is living a long time with no earnings. By paying social insurance contributions they insure against that risk; they are guaranteed a modest retirement income for life and, if they live a very long time, the payments they receive will aggregate to a very large amount. This is of course cross-subsidised by those who paid the same social insurance contributions but die before retirement age, or shortly after retirement age; they get little or nothing out of the scheme, in financial terms. But everyone who participates in the scheme gets the assurance that, should this risk eventuate for them, they will be protected. That's how insurance works.

Right. Someone who retires today has already paid all the social insurance contributions. This is a done deal. You can't turn around now and tell them "Sorry, we've changed our minds. This insurance arrangement is cancelled, and you're not getting the cover we promised you."

Which means that, even if you decide to terminate the contributory retirement pension tomorrow, you're still going to have to pay out all the pensions that people have accrued with the contributions they have paid up to today. And it will take many, many decades to run off that liability.

Which, in turn, means that if you terminate the contributory retirement pension and terminate or reduce social insurance contributions, you're going to have to replace the lost revenue by putting up some other tax, to fund the pensions that still have to be paid. So you still have a situation where currenttaxpayers have to support current retirees.

Of course, you don't have to do that by putting up income tax — any tax will do. And if you want to link this to the housing crisis, one possibility is to impose a US-style annual property tax, of a significant amount, on the value of everybody's home. That would encourage people at retirement, when their income is going down, to downsize to smaller, less valuable homes, so as to reduce the demands which property tax makes on their modest retirement income. This would mean more houses would come on the market. It would also tend to drive down house prices; as the financial liabilities attached to an asset increase, the value of the asset declines.

The people of working age who would buy all the family homes coming on to the market would then have to pay the swingeing property tax, so you'd still have people of working age paying tax to fund retirement income for their parents' dgeneration — it would be property tax rather than social insurance contributions, but a euro of property tax costs the same as a euro of social insurance contributions.