Charlie Tims

yup, it's a tubthumper. I think the bit that goes "British society in 2020 will be significantly older than today, which will further that process of individualisation" is interesting, because basically, I disagree.

At Demos we tend to talk about the ?new old? as the now aging baby boomers; a new kind of old people, with new aspirations, hybrid identities and individualised lifestyles. But in many ways people in this age bracket, with considerable individualised freedoms and choices, have been kicking around for the last 40 years.

In my own experience the new old aren't the baby boomers - but their parents. The over 85's are genuinely a new bracket of old people - the like of which we haven't seen before. The defining influence on many of those in their late 50s and 60s isn't the myriad of choices open to them to construct their hybrid identities, but the constraints based on their ability to construct their lives, by the need to care for their parents.

The result of this, is that a generation of people who experienced far greater freedoms at the start of their life in the 50s/60s/70s, are now seeing them pegged back in their later years; moving back in with their parents, taking them in and assisting their carers.

I guess you could then say that the family will be reinforced in 2020, not by a new approach to care for the young but a more prescient need to care for the old.

Or maybe not. I think that this is probably the exception to the rule rather than the norm. But I do know a group of 10 baby boomers, who are preparing for old age, not by subtly asking their children if they?ll come and live with them in 10 years time, but by taking out a shared mortgage on a large country house so that they can care for one another. Very Demos.

Paul Paul

First, by The New Old we meant the Baby Boomers as they will be not as they are. This generation includes people in their late thirties and early forties today.

Second, clearly every generation is different from the next, but the combined effect of much higher levels of disposable income and the value shifts we identified in The New Old (including the effect of growing up in peacetime) I think suggest that the Boomers are special. If you disagree with that, you need to say why the over-85s are a "genuinely new bracket of older people", beyond the fact that there are more of them nowadays.

Third, in The New Old we did accept that the effect of an ageing society might be to reinforce certain family structures (the so-called "beanpole family"). But I think the dependence between generations (including between grandparents and grandchildren) is more mutual than you suggest.

Fourth, we also pointed out that declining widowhood will not offset the effect of much higher rates of divorce, and as a result far more people will be living solo by the age of 65. I think this is what Tom was most directly referring to.

Fifth, it is not clear what effect divorce will have on the willingness of children to take parents into their homes to care for them, but at the very least it implies a strain on their capacity to do so.