Age and austerity

The revelation today that Britain's pensioners collectively owe £57bn on mortgages, credit cards and loans will come as a shock. The biggest surprise is that one in five of those who own homes still has an outstanding mortgage, averaging £38,000. We know that many retired people find it difficult to make ends meet, but until now the popular image has been one of financial rectitude in which older people did not stop working until their mortgage had been paid off. Today's figures from Scottish Widows mean we must question our assumption that a horror of debt and a consequently stringent attitude to borrowing has been passed down from the generation who made their housing decisions amid post-war austerity to those newly-pensioned baby-boomers whose adult lives have been lived against a background of expanding credit.