Baby boomers have been the protagonist for many of the booms and busts since the Second World War. And they will continue to make their mark as a growing number enter retirement age over the next two decades. But don't blame them just yet for the country's burgeoning health-care costs.
At a recent CFA Vancouver event, David Foot, author of the best-selling book Boom, Bust and Echo, said rising health-care costs over the past decade have come from the growing health-care needs of the generation born after the First World War.
"You make half of your lifetime demands on health care in the last years of your life. Life expectancy in Canada is around 81," he said. "For the last decade, we've been absorbing the [generation] from the Roaring 20s through their prime health-care utilization period.
That's why our health-care system has been under so much pressure. It has nothing to do with the boomers."
According to BC Stats, the number of people over the age of 80 in B.C. rose to more than 204,000 in 2012 from under 129,000 in 2000. The annual rate of growth of the oldest population segment ranged between 3.3% and 5.3% in that period of time.
But according to BC Stats' projections, that rate of growth is expected to slow over the next six years. Between 2014 and 2019, the annual rate of growth of the over-80 population is expected to slow from 3.27% to 2.74%.
The government can thank the Great Depression for that.
According to Foot, the rate of population growth fell during the 1930s in Canada and the U.S. as relatively fewer children were born and a greater proportion of people died younger because of poor living conditions.
But by 2020, the rate of growth of the elderly will start rising again, and grow increasingly faster as the baby-boomer generation hits their 80s and beyond. Hopefully by then, new ways of providing and paying for health care will have been put in place.
"We have a window of opportunity to get health care right. We haven't done it in the last decade, but we better in this one because after that, all hell breaks loose when the boomers enter the system." •
