How will each generation experience the year 2033?

In 2033, climate change will have reshaped life for every generation in Australia. We’ll experience increasingly frequent extreme weather events.

In farming communities, these impacts will be felt more intensely since everyone’s life revolves around harvests.

In the big cities, climate change is felt less directly.

The people feeling it most intensely will be low-income earners. We’ve built unnecessary heat islands on the outskirts of our sprawling cities where homes have no vegetation to provide shade, and people can’t afford to heat or cool their homes adequately.

Climate change is a force furthering the social divide within Australia.

Very slowly, we will adapt to hotter days by adjusting the built environment and our daily routines.

Water management, bushfire preparation and agriculture are going to be big challenges but hardly felt by the urban wealthy. By 2033 we might already have some pockets of uninsurable stretches of land in rural areas.

This doesn’t mean that our future is bleak. Our national business model (mining, agriculture, international education, tourism) will continue to deliver wealth in the coming decade. Also, Australia is one of the few places in the world that can manage population flows easily.

Let’s explore the main challenges that each generation faces in the year 2033.

As the ageing of Australia speeds up, more of us will live alone – the loneliness pandemic among our elderly population (pre-Boomers, born before 1945) will be severe.

Living alone in the family home after your partner dies feels lonely at the best of times. Widowed elderly people in car-dependent suburbs are even more likely to experience poor mental health.

Forward-looking pre-Boomers get out of car-dependent areas while both partners are still alive and settle into walkable neighbourhoods. This guarantees better access to health care and increases the likelihood of social interactions. Health, both physical and mental, is the main challenge for all pre-Boomers in 2023.

Baby Boomers

By 2033, even the youngest Baby Boomer (born 1946 to 1963) will be of retirement age.

The oldest Baby Boomers will be aged 87, the youngest ones 70. The younger cohort of Baby Boomers will be excellent customers since they have time, decent health and money, while all other cohorts lack at least one of the three.

By 2033 Baby Boomers are downsizing at scale. As a result, huge numbers of properties in the middle suburbs of our largest cities enter the market.

Many of these blocks will be densified in the form of townhouses and, where plausible, medium-density dwellings. This will lead to densification of the middle suburbs.

So far, Baby Boomers have reinvented every stage of the life cycle. It’s all but certain that they will do the same at the retirement stage.

We will need to update all stereotypes we might hold about retirees. Baby Boomers are in the right age group to move into retirement villages (not aged-care homes) in the coming years. Expect this property class to be completely overhauled. It would be wise for Baby Boomers to seriously consider how to transfer wealth to the next generation while they are still alive.

By handing over wealth after your passing you miss out on the joy of giving while also lacking control. Many of the wealthier Baby Boomers will give money to their kids by acting as the bank of mum and dad.

Gen X

Gen X (born 1964 to 1981), despite being a small cohort thanks to the introduction of the contraceptive pill, will dominate positions of political leadership and set the policy direction of Australia.

Gen Xers are simply in the right stage of the life cycle, their 50s, in the coming decade. This is when Australians tend to be given top jobs.

They were the first generation to see their mums enter the workforce at scale and became the first generation to think it completely normal for women to be part of the workforce.

Gen X will continue to push for gender equality throughout the coming decade. I argued in the past that I expect the gender pay gap to be completely closed by 2033.

More and more Gen Xers will be empty nesters and feel financial burdens associated with looking after children, caring for ageing parents, and paying down a mortgage lifted.

Many lost their parents throughout the 2020s and had an emotionally tumultuous decade. The 2030s look bright for Gen X.

Millennials

Most parenting is done by Millennials (born 1982 to 1999) by 2033. They also make up the biggest voter block.

Politics will cater to their needs, and we can expect universal free child care and more radical policy reforms being demanded: Four-day work weeks (unlikely), taxation of wealth rather than income (baby steps), and severe housing reforms (likely).

Many Millennials face housing challenges. Photo: Getty

The trope of Millennials being snowflakes will completely melt away by 2033. As they enter the family formation stage, they grow up quickly after decades of refusing to.

Throughout the 2020s Millennials move from their hipster inner-city apartments into family-sized homes on the urban fringe.

They can’t move into homes in the middle suburbs because their own Baby Boomer parents hog family-sized homes as empty nesters and block additional local development successfully.

In the 2030s Millennials will finally move into these middle suburbs as Baby Boomers downsize (by choice, necessity, or death). Compared to previous generations, Millennial home ownership will be much lower.

Gen Z

Gen Z (born 2000 to 2017) find the pessimism of 2023 to have been largely misplaced, as they enter the workforce with great pay, and experience a mild softening of house prices.

Climate adaptation progresses faster than they would have dreamt possible.

Humans are increasingly engaged in the great clean-up. Organisations like Seabin and The Ocean Cleanup will be under way.

We shouldn’t expect Gen Z to have more kids on average than Millennials. The overwhelming majority of migration moving to Australia in 2033 will be Gen Zs aged in their 20s. This generation will be very multicultural by 2033.

The oldest Gen Alphas (born after 2018) are teenagers by 2033. I suspect them to have it easier than their Millennial parents on the housing market as they might be the real beneficiaries of the Baby Boomer wealth transfer.

Millennials inherit money when they are about 60 and their Gen Alpha kids are about 30. At 60 your financial and housing needs are on the down slope.

Millennial parents will, as a group, be in a great position to give their children a leg up on the housing market. This development guarantees a stronger division of Gen Alpha into asset owners and asset renters.

One way to fix this certain development would be to tax wealth transfers in the coming decade.

I’d say that is close to a political impossibility considering how big of a voter group Millennials and Boomers still are.

Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. His latest book aims to awaken the love of maps and data in young readers. Follow Simon on X (Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn for daily data insights in short format.