• Since the post-World War 2 ‘baby boom’ fertility rates in the UK have dropped while life expectancy has continued to rise (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/ageing/articles/livinglonger/implicationsofchildlessnessamongtomorrowsolderpopulation)
• Women born in the peak of the 1960s ‘baby boom’ twice as likely not to have had children as women born during the post-WW2 boom, according to the Office for National Statistics
• The number of women who have not had children who will reach their 80th birthday is expected to increase three-fold by 2045
• When care needs become greatest, children are the most common providers of informal care, with just over 3 in 10 people aged 85 years and over receiving informal care from their children
• As adult children are the most common source of informal social care to parents, the rising incidence of childlessness is set to raise pressure on the UK’s already under-pressure long-term care system
Tom Selby, senior analyst at AJ Bell, comments:
“The UK’s social care system was already facing huge strain from an ageing population before the COVID-19 crisis hit. Clearly since then the central focus has been on ensuring vulnerable people in care homes are protected.
“As we edge out of lockdown and the Chancellor begins preparing his Autumn Statement, attention will inevitably turn to addressing the longer-term challenges the care system faces.
“While rising life expectancy is often talked about as one of the key factors placing pressure on the care system, falling fertility rates and higher levels of childlessness will also have an impact.
“Social care networks involve a diverse group of people, with children often central to ensuring their parents are looked after as they get older. In fact when care needs become greatest, children are the most common providers of informal care, with around 3 in 10 people aged 85 and over receiving informal care from their children.
“In the post-WW2 baby boom just 1 in 10 women remained childless in their lifetimes – by the mid-1960s this figure had dropped back to 1 in 5.
“Furthermore, while just under half (46%) of women born in 1920 could expect to survive 80 years, 75% of those born in the mid-1960s can expect to.
“This combination of factors will see rising numbers of people relying in one way or another on the formal care system as they get older.”
Reforming the care system
“Attempts have been made in the last decade or so to reach a new settlement on funding long-term care in the UK.
“However, these have failed to deliver in part because of the costs involved and in part because politicians have struggled to agree on how the new system should work.
“At the moment people in England and Northern Ireland with assets worth more than £23,250 have to pay all their care costs (in Wales the figure is £28,500 while in Scotland it is £50,000). Plans to cap lifetime care costs were forged by the Coalition Government before being abandoned on cost grounds.
“Theresa May’s Conservative manifesto then backed a £100,000 social care ‘capital floor’ – but without mentioning a cap on lifetime costs. The Conservative leader subsequently U-turned and insisting ‘nothing has changed’ regarding the controversial policy, but still lost her Parliamentary majority.
“This is clearly a political hornets’ nest but continuing inaction risks seeing the challenges facing those having to pay for care themselves further exacerbated.
“Regardless of how politicians look to reform the system, individuals – and particularly those less likely to have informal support structures to help them in later life – need to plan for the possibility of rising care costs in retirement.”
