Rich boomer, poor boomer: retirement prospects for the not-so-lucky generation

Abstract

The depiction of the baby boomers as the 'lucky generation' is wrong according to a report by Myra Hamilton and Clive Hamilton. There is a sharp divide between the retirement prospects of rich and poor boomers, with the 'lucky generation' tag being reserved for a small affluent minority. When it comes to retirement, most boomers are neither lucky nor confident about their future. The first baby boomers are now starting to retire, a phenomenon with far-reaching social and policy implications explored in this paper, which is part of a larger research project being undertaken by the Australia Institute. Baby boomers have attracted considerable hostility and envy from other generations for their good fortune, perhaps most notoriously their access to free higher education and their luck with the booming property market. As they approach retirement, the boomers are at the forefront of another significant social change. For much of the twentieth century, retirement was understood as a distinct phase of life that began when full-time work stopped and the worker began living on a pension or their own savings. In more recent times, the line between working full-time and not working has become blurred, with many favouring partial retirement or looking to find other ways of earning income after they leave full-time employment. At the vanguard of this change, boomers are depicted as the generation that never wants to retire. But this popular view is simplistic and conceals as much as it reveals about the retirement prospects of baby boomers. The boomer generation is often misunderstood as a homogeneous generation, and claims about the behaviour of boomers approaching retirement actually disguise the very diverse circumstances within the generation. Baby boomers entered the workforce when the predominant form of retirement funding was the age pension. Now, as they approach retirement having spent time in the workforce and in unpaid caring and domestic roles, the emphasis has shifted to private provision through superannuation. The boomer generation was 30-45 years old when the Superannuation Guarantee Charge was introduced in 1992 and therefore sits right in the centre of the transition between the age pension and superannuation.

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