Think-tank calls for granny creches and 'elderpreneurs' to aid baby boomers

Employers should set up "granny creches", where people can place elderly relatives while they go to work, a leading think-tank says in a report to be published this week.

Banks and the Government should also encourage people nearing retirement to become "elderpreneurs" and start new businesses rather than rely on their pensions.

The proposals are included in a report by Demos on how the baby-boom generation will act as it reaches old age. The report, produced with the charity Age Concern, predicts that the baby boomers will trigger a pensioners' revolution similar to the sexual revolution they led in the 1960s.

With 17 million baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965, making up 29 per cent of the entire population, the report says the pensioners of 2020 represent a "demographic timebomb".

Julia Huber, author of the report, said: "The baby boomers are the first generation to have grown up in a consumer society, to be products of the age of affluence, to have been advertised and marketed to all their lives. They have come to expect their individual wants and needs to be satisfied. "

The report warns that the "new oldies" will be less accepting of pensioner poverty than those before them, and will demand more from the welfare state. It says the next generation of pensioners will fall into three categories.

* The "selfish generation": Sixties hedonists who will continue to devote their lives to their own wealth, fulfilment and enjoyment with little regard for future generations.

* "Civic defenders": liberal activists of 40 years ago, who persist in their radicalism and demand for equal rights as they approach their seventies.

* "Invisible elders": the more socially deprived classes who may have missed much of the wildness of the Sixties and Seventies, and will have little collective influence or clout.

The "new oldies" will want more independence, and be less willing to go into "grey ghettos" of sheltered housing or nursing homes, the report says. It urges employers to redefine retirement and be more prepared to use the skills and knowledge of older people, while offering them a better work-life balance. The report also predicts that increasing numbers of people in their twenties and thirties will be looking after their parents in their old age.

It suggests that companies should set up in-house "elder care" facilities, where workers can place their relatives during the day, and which could offer computer training, meals and other activities. The Government should also underwrite low-risk schemes for elderly people to set up social and business enterprises.

Gordon Lishman, director general of Age Concern, said: "The boomers are unlikely to put up and shut up. If the political parties fail to listen to them on priority issues like the provision of public services and retirement then they could be punished at the ballot box."

Leading article, page 14