Legacy boom years predicted as baby boomers begin to die out
Howard Lake | 22 May 2014 | News
The fourth decade of the 21st century will be “legacy boom years” for charities as the baby boomers born after the Second World War begin to die.
New findings from the Legacy Giving 2050 project suggest this will contribute to an increase in total legacy income to £5.16 billion by the middle of the century. It is currently at just over £2.1 billion.
The project – aimed at tracking the effect of baby boomers – says that deaths among this “charitably minded” generation, which accounts for 22 per cent of the UK’s population, will start to climb in 2020, peaking around 20 year later. It also says the percentage of the baby boomers who die childless will “climb steadily” from 2030.
Building on similar projects in 2007 and 2010, Legacy Foresight, which produces the research, now predicts that, by 2050:
- The percentage of wills containing a charitable bequest will rise to 19 per cent from the current figure of 14.5 per cent
- The number of charitable bequests will double from 112,000 to 227,000
- Pecuniary gifts will rise more quickly than residuals (what’s left over avert all the pecuniary gifts have been disbursed) as “charities reach out to new groups of mid-wealth households”, accounting doe 58 per cent of charitable bequessts compared to the current figure of 55 per cent.
The report says:
“2030-2040 will be legacy boom years thanks to a happy combination of stronger economic growth, accelerating death rates and more childless deaths. Over this period, real growth rates are expected to reach 3.1 per cent p.a. – outpacing the nineties boom.”
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Photo: legacy by marekuliasz on Shutterstock.com
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.