Baby boomers burst into conventional pensioners

The youth of the 1960s are now heading to conventional retirement.

While the some of the generation who grew up listening to the Beatles and the Stones plan substantial projects, particularly in relation to travel or using second homes, most people’s ideas for spending time after retirement retain a traditional pattern – watching television and films, playing records or going for long walks.

Research by academics at King’s College London shows most of the generation now hitting retirement have fairly modest aspirations, hoping at best to maintain current lifestyles and activities provided health and finances permit them to do so.

Dr Rebecca Leach, who carried out the study, said research provided "only limited evidence that first-wave boomers are developing new third age lifestyles".

She added those interviewed "professed a critique of materialism, yet demonstrated ambivalence about this in practice".

“Travel was a major consumption item for boomers and loomed large in projects for retirement,” Dr Leach said.

“Less evident was any wholesale transfer of teenage consumption concerns into midlife: boomers might have been the first teenagers, but they have now grown up. Consumer interests have matured, notably around interests linked to homes, gardens and travel.”

The research – supported by the by the Economic and Social Research Council and Arts and Humanities Research Council – also highlights four types of modern pensioners.

• The baby bulge group: aware of themselves competing with many others for school places and jobs.
• The burden group: worried about the consequences of being followed by a smaller generation.
• The lucky generation : feeling they had benefited most from economic growth and the welfare state.
• The political generation :believing they had been trailblazers through their lives, taking initiatives that had produced social and cultural change.

The research also found those born between 1945 and 1952 face financial pressures to support both their offspring and their parents.

Some 43 per cent of the age group have at least one child living at home, while 37 per have financial responsibility for other members of the household – usually children.

Improvements in life expectancy mean that 43 per cent of people aged 50 to 57 still have a mother alive, and 20 per cent a father still living.