According to the recently released Roy Morgan Report, State of the Nation Report 4 – ‘Spotlight on New Zealanders Aged 55+’ – the net wealth of the 55+ has risen 179.5% since 2002, despite New Zealand’s total net wealth only rising 130.2% over the same period. This group now has over 50% of the nation’s net wealth, despite making up only 24.7% of the population.
The net wealth of the 55+ in New Zealand has risen from 43% ($176 billion) of the population’s total net wealth in 2002, to 52% ($492 billion) in 2011.
The rise in wealth of the 55+ age group is only partly due to this group’s increasing proportion of the population. Since 2002 the 55+ age group has risen only from 19.5% to 24.7% of the population.
Commentator Bernard Hickey says “The unlucky ones were those that took on massive debts in the last five years to buy houses at the newly inflated prices. They were mostly below 40.”
“This structural shift in wealth to the aged and a loading up of debt on the young is obviously not sustainable, particularly when combined with the current promises of universal superannuation from 65 and publicly funded healthcare,” he says.
“With the current policies, New Zealand faces the bizarre prospect of either higher income tax rates on the increasingly indebted young to pay for pensions and “free” healthcare for the increasingly wealthy old, or huge amounts of government borrowing, which would of course have to eventually be repaid by the young.”
The Roy Morgan Report is based on data from a nationwide survey of approximately 12,000 New Zealanders in the 12 months to December 2011, but also includes trended data stretching back over the past decade.
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