The stereotype of the cashed up baby boomer is not accidental. Speaking with HelloCare, Professor Kathy Eager, who designed the national funding model for residential aged care known as the AN-ACC and served as an adviser to the Aged Care Royal Commission, says Treasury is actively pushing this narrative to justify tougher reforms and higher consumer payments.
“The stereotype of the wealthy baby boomer is definitely being pushed by Treasury and they are doing so for several reasons. One of those reasons is to justify increased consumer payments and other changes in aged care,” Professor Eager said.
She argues the narrative serves a clear political purpose. “Disparities in housing are being used to justify charging older people a lot more to receive a lot less.” Young people sit at the sharp end of Australia’s housing crisis, yet this reality is being weaponised against older Australians who need care the most.
The timing is no coincidence. The first baby boomers turn 80 in 2026, and the number of people aged 80 and over is projected to surge by 60 per cent by 2035 to more than two million. Governments are rightly worried about the budget impact, but Professor Eager says they are reaching for the wrong lever.
“Lumping all older people together is not the basis of sensible policy. Baby boomers are a very heterogeneous group,” she told HelloCare. Defining old age as anyone 65 and older compounds the error. “Only 30 per cent of people in their late 60s are on a pension, so most of this cohort could afford aged care. But this is not useful as most people in their 60s do not need aged care.”
The people who do need care tell a different story. “The percentage of people on the pension progressively increases as time goes on, reaching 75 per cent by age 80.” By age 85, the average age for entering residential care, “only 13 per cent of the population has more than $100,000 in superannuation”. By the late 80s and 90s, most are on the full pension with few assets except, perhaps, the family home.
This is not abstract data. Professor Eager highlights the gender reality behind the numbers. “The majority going into very old age are women. Women have always had much less superannuation than men.
Many women of this older generation worked in the family home and were never in the paid workforce to accrue superannuation. Few women who did work were able to accrue any significant superannuation savings after a lifetime of earning less and having workforce breaks to care for children.”
Recent Australian Taxation Office statistics reinforce the picture. Median super balances for women aged 60 to 64 sit well below those of men, and balances are routinely drawn down in the 60s and early 70s before people need aged care. By the time most reach their mid-80s, super is largely exhausted.
The COTA Australia State of the Older Nation 2025 report, released in early February 2026, underscores the challenges. It highlights an ongoing intergenerational divide in financial security, housing and health, with many older Australians still facing cost of living pressures despite some improvement since the pandemic years.
Professor Eager is clear that intergenerational inequity is real. “Intergenerational inequity is a real concern. The other issue that has Treasury worried is the number of people now moving into old age.” But she rejects using it as cover for cuts. “The solution is not just to cut services and increase fees. The government has many other options.”
In her view, the wealthy boomer myth has become convenient political armour. It makes it easier to tighten support at home, shift costs onto already strained hospitals and residential facilities, and avoid genuine tax reform such as an aged care levy that starts at age 45 and sits alongside the Medicare levy.
“The government does not have the political will as yet for tax reform even if tax reform would better support older people at home. This has been a political choice to date,” she said.
The consequences are already visible. The Support at Home program, which replaced the old Home Care Package system on 1 November 2025, has seen median prices for key services rise sharply. Independent analysis by StewartBrown in February 2026 found median prices across services had increased by 39 per cent since June 2025, with personal care and other supports hit hardest.
Small not for profit providers are struggling. People who cannot afford the new co-contributions simply go without, ending up in emergency departments or occupying hospital beds that could serve younger patients.
Professor Eager’s warning is stark and evidence based: policy built on a myth does not just fail older women who changed nappies rather than built super balances. It fails the entire system and every taxpayer who will eventually foot the higher bill for hospital blowouts and premature residential placements.
The rich boomer stereotype has done its job in making cuts politically palatable. But as Professor Eager, the latest COTA data and the lived reality of thousands of older women show, the reality it conceals is far messier, far poorer and far more urgent. Ignoring it will not save money. It will only shift the pain and multiply the cost.
