As the great bulge of babies born after World War II has moved through their life course, the world has changed to suit them and their needs.

A repost from 26 September 2025.

But just as the latest generations of Zoomers and Millennials have begun to outnumber the Baby Boomers, and are taking over as the politically dominant age group, the Boomers have caused one last change: retirement has become more a matter of personal preference, with many choosing to keep working.

In the years before the first of the Boomers began reaching normal retirement age in the early 2010s, the big trend was to early retirement. Many people fancied the idea of stopping work just as soon as it was financially feasible.

Men wouldn’t become eligible for the age pension until they turned 65, but maybe they had enough superannuation or other savings to live on until then. Or perhaps they could downsize, selling the family home and moving to something smaller and cheaper up the coast, leaving them with money to invest and live on the interest.

Employers were often keen to get rid of older workers, giving them redundancy payouts sufficient to let them retire before reaching age-pension age. Early retirement was great if you could wangle it somehow.

This was when worthies started worrying about “population ageing”. The average age of the population was rising because couples were having fewer children, but oldies were living longer.

Early retirement was adding to the........

© Pearls and Irritations