top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 167 points 6 months ago (28 children)

Generally, you'll see terms like "demographic collapse" instead, but yeah basically.

A lot of people were born during the immediate post-WWII years. Those people are now dying. Cause and effect.

  • source
  • hideshow 28 child comments
  • [–] [S] 120 points 6 months ago (22 children)
  • load more comments (13 replies)
  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago

    To an extent, COVID hit some of the oldest boomers - it was a little early, if we had held of COVID for another 10 years it definitely would have been a prime boomer expiration accelerator.

    As things are, my parents are some of the earliest boomers and they're just turning 80. The death-rate boom should be picking up speed soon. Too bad they're giving all their acumumulated wealth to the healthcare industry instead of their kids.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    The baby boom was ten years or so. The death boom is more spread out…people start dying in their 60s and can live into their 90s. So figure 30 years or so for the “boom.” Much harder to notice.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 66 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    Starts with a "oh shit these old people have expensive healthcare needs!", proceeds to "how the hell are we going to pay for their elder benefits?" (Social Security in the US), and eventually to "even their houses got gobbled up by the banks and private capital when they had to reverse mortgage their homes to pay off their medical bills and live out their final days...."

  • source
  • [–] 21 points 6 months ago
    [–] 16 points 6 months ago

    It has already started.

  • source
  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    I think the deaths are a little more spread out.

  • source
  • [–] 14 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    yes. it's actually a huge thing the funeral world is dreading.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 21 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Publicly dreading, privately planning what they are going to do with all that extra cash.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago

    I like to call them death waves because that is what we called them in Cities Skylines.

  • source
  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago

    The "baby boom" happened between 1946 and 1964, an 18 year period. Not everyone will die within an 18 year period. Some have already passed, some will live into their 90's and could be around until the 2060's

  • source
  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago

    We can only fucking hope...

  • source
  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago

    A baby is the product of birth, the product of death is a corpse, so it'd be a corpse bloom.

  • source
  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago

    The worst part of WWIII will be the second wave boomers, because they’ll trigger WWIV when they age out of relevancy.

  • source
  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago (1 child)
    load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 10 points 6 months ago

    Yes. We have been talking about it for 30 years at this point.

  • source
  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago

    It's normally thought of as more of a "baby bust" but same thing really, a big whack of old people around for a while.

  • source
  • One can only hope.

  • source
  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago

    We had one in 2020 and 2021

  • source
  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago (9 children)

    Retirement is more of a synchronized event, because folks generally retire around the same age...

  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    People are generally born at the same age too.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Yes, but the point is their dying is more of a distribution.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    Unless it's Cities Skylines. Then they all die at the same exact moment and your entire network gets slammed with hearses unable to get anywhere.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 7 points 6 months ago

    Americans can't afford nursing homes and elder care.

    So, afraid death it is. Hope there's no reverse mortgage for any of you to deal with.

  • source
  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago

    Sure as fuck hope so

  • source
  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago*

    Sort of. You do get an increase in death rates decades later as people from a baby boom eventually die. However births tend to be in relative sync (closer together anyway) during a baby boom say over a period of a few years, while deaths are much more spread out maybe over a decade or more. That's because other factors come into play such as individual health, and the differences in people of the same age's health depending on economic state and lifestyle etc. In otherwords, lots of people may have been born in say 1945 but their deaths will be spread out over years because not everyone dies at the same age.

    Many western countries are going through a period of natural population decline due to low birth rates and increasing death rates as baby boomers from 1945 onwards start dying. But those deaths are spread out, and somewhat offset by immigration. So yes more people are dying but populations are overall stable or even growing as immigrants flow in.

  • source
  • [+] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)
    [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Of the 76M Boomers born between '45 and '69, 64M are still alive. With a life expectancy of 85 and the first traumch entering their 80s this year, we would expect to see a rapid fall off in the population (or a rapid climb in life expectancy average) over the next decade

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago

    You have to be careful with life expectancy. The LE of someone who is already 80 is much higher than that of a newborn. There are actuary tables if you want to look for them.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    Yea, but it has more to do with baby boomers wrecking everything than anything else.

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    We generally call those wars and plagues.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
    load more comments
    view more: next ›