Welcome to "The Inheritocracy"​ with Eliza Filby – episode 13

Episode 13 summary

February 04, 2025 // 38 min, 02 sec

Falling birth rates in developed economies are no longer just a social or political issue, they’re a huge a corporate one. Combined with the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, we are entering an age of inheritocracy, where what you inherit – not how hard you work – that makes for success.

In this episode:

Marissa is joined by writer, speaker and consultant Eliza Filby to explore the demographic disruptions of an aging workforce and wealth transference that'll shape the world of work in 2050.​

• If the sizes and ages of our populations shape our economies, how will employers have to respond to the reduced workforces of 2050?​
• Will unequal responsibility for elder care see women lose the gains they’ve won in equal childcare?​
• The “Great Inheritance” will further reduce our workforces as money becomes less of a motivator to work.​
• Working for the Bank of Mom and Dad: will it make more sense in 2050 to invest your loyalty in your parents not your employer?

Episode transcript

Marissa Geist 

Welcome to the Talent Time Machine, the podcast for talent leaders that takes you on a trip to the world of work in 2050. We're going to think about trends, possibilities, and new realities for talent.  

We've talked about disruption in our workplaces from digital to the pandemic. But there's a bigger disruption headed our way. It's us. Ourselves. How old were growing as societies and how we transfer wealth between generations? 

This isn't just a political or social issue. It's going to be a huge corporate issue. If demography really is destiny, how will these forces reshape work in 2050?  

I'm Marissa Geist, and I'm joined by Dr. Eliza Filby, a writer and consultant who helps governments and companies understand these generational and financial shifts. Hi, Eliza. Welcome. Since you've done such an incredible body of work, I wanted to go back and ask where your interest in the intersection between changing societies and work comes from. 

Why did you get into this? 

Eliza Filby 

I think it's because so much of the conversation around work was changing just as I was entering the workforce. So, I'm a millennial. I was born in 1981, and I was the generation that were told, let's get as many of you to college, university as possible, and then you will enter the professional workplace and this sort of golden ticket to social mobility, professional stability, but also find your purpose.  

I remember kind of watching, you know, all these kind of graduation lectures from like, Steve Jobs and all of these people telling us, you know, find your purpose. That's what will make you successful.  

And I think at the time, though, it was coinciding with the 2008 financial crisis. So, there was kind of like this really interesting juxtaposition where we'd grown up being told, this is the path to success. Find your own route because you're in an individualist age. It's all about finding your own purpose and passion. 

But also, the economy is careening out of control, and everything is being thrown up in the air.

We think about work and the economy and maybe HR and talent as a kind of like quite isolated debates and issues. But it's influenced by everything from birth rates to the evolution of the individual to the relationship with technology to changing societal values, culture. And I think what's interesting, really, since 2008, we've had a real condition and companies are really being forced to kind of reflect and go, actually, yeah, all of this stuff and how society is evolving is not only impacting my bottom line, my consumers or my clients, but really my people, my employees. 

And for me to understand my business and futureproof my business, I need to understand these issues. And actually, you know, I'm a trained historian. I think in terms of time. Time is my currency, if you like. And I just wanted to kind of work with companies that were interested in understanding the time in which they're operating and adapting their services, their products, their people accordingly. 

Marissa Geist 

That's so fascinating. I'm Gen-X, so we entered the workforce with no motivation. Just go to work, right? Definitely go to college. Just get into work. And I do remember the bandying about the jokes about, oh, the millennials, they need purpose at work. And the rest of us were like, that is not the spiel we got as we exited university, and we exited in the tech boom, or the tech bust. 

So, it's the same. We just had, I think, totally different expectations, very specific and kind of uninspiring expectations. It was just go and grind it out and that's what you're going to do because that's what your parents do. And it's really fascinating, now as the birthrates drop and there will be more work than people. And the intersection of AI coming in, and then I look at my kids and they just don't identify with work the same way that I do, or I think even I have a sister who's a millennial or the way she does, and my 21 year old is looking to make money, but he's not looking for that purpose from work the way that I think millennials did, and unintentionally, the rest of us did as well. I think your identity really does come from work in a lot of ways. What you do is who you're affiliated with. So that's really interesting.  

And when I think about your “The Great Inheritance…” everything's a “Great” now isn't it? Did you coin that phrase or did somebody else coin the phrase “the Great Inheritance?” 

Eliza Filby 

And you know, I realized if you put “great” in front of anything, people talk about it. They feel like it's a trend they can't ignore. The Great Resignation, the Great Recession. 

Marissa Geist 

It’s just so great. Yes. 

Eliza Filby 

Yeah. Or not so great, actually. The great wealth transfer is what people in financial services and products talk a lot about. That's the phrase that has been coined, and it refers to the amount of wealth that is saddled in the sort of over-50s, largely over-60s demographic, mostly baby boomers. Right. And how that wealth is going to trickle down, has to trickle down within families. 

And so that's what the great wealth transfer has become known as and what it is. And that's the subject of my book. 

Marissa Geist 

So as far as being stingy, because I have been reading a lot on how they have a lot of money, but it's all in the couch cushions and they're very hesitant to give it up, I think because life expectancy expanding and just really being more cautious and they spend less than everybody else. Do you really think it's going to transfer or is there a risk that they'll just sit on it and whittle it away? 

Eliza Filby 

Well, so we know that families are complex businesses, right? I mean, a complex, emotionally entangled dynamic, you know, it's worse than a business. And it's really complicated if you’ve got a family business. But we know the difficulties surrounding family and money. The great sort of Victorian novels are built on this kind of, quite often the novels of Charles Dickens or Jane Austen are all about inheritance, you know, and even Succession, that TV show, was based on a premise that basically the great wealth transfer too actually.  

It's an incredibly emotionally charged issue, and I think what's really interesting. My book is called Inheritocracy: It's Time to Talk About the Bank of Mum and Dad and it's really because not many people like talking about it. And mum and dad don't like talking about it. And their offspring don't like talking about it. And we don't like talking about it with our friends because we're embarrassed to how reliant we are on it if we're lucky to have it. 

And we don't really like talking about it in society. Now, what we have is this uneven economic spread, and to be clear, it plays out differently across the world and it plays out differently in terms of where those pots of cash are. It's the amount of wealth in the older generations.  

Now that is off the back of a global economy that has encouraged the building of wealth and the stagnation of wage. So, millennials and really anyone under 45, essentially, although it's changed since the pandemic, wages have not bought you what they bought our parents, particularly in respect to property. At the same time, wealth has increased incredibly since the 2008 financial crisis. So, who does that benefit? It benefits obviously the wealthy, but it critically benefits those who already have assets by and large older generations. 

So that explains why there's so much wealth. 

Marissa Geist 

And Eliza, just to interrupt for a second, you mentioned it's not distributed equally or evenly. Is this a discussion about privilege or is this concept true in every society, just to different degrees? 

Eliza Filby 

So, if we're talking about the baby boomer cohort, really if we're talking about Western Europe, North America, South Australia, English speaking world, we are talking about that generation owning somewhere between 50 to 70% of that nation's private wealth. Okay. That's the extent that we're talking about it plays out differently in China, India, the various reasons we're talking that wealth being more prevalent amongst Gen X, partly because of how they, when those economies opened up. 

But before when we're talking about particularly North America, we're really talking about the baby boomers having that amount of wealth. And when that trickles down. 

Marissa Geist 

And so, when that trickles down, that's really going to affect people's motivation, because Bank of Mom and Dad can offer a cushion that the bank of Mom and Dad didn't have accumulating their own wealth. So how is that going to affect people? If we fast forward to 2050, that wealth is assumptively transferred. Now, do people… are they just loyal to their families, is the family the new business? They don't really care about work? How does that affect work? 

Eliza Filby 

So really what we're talking about is for a long time we talked about that intergenerational unfairness, you know, older generations having all the luck and all the money than the younger generation. Well, if we fast forward to 2050, the picture looks very different because that wealth would have transferred, that wealth would become realized amongst chiefly the millennials, Gen Z and the generation after them, Generation Alpha. 

Marissa Geist 

So once again, Gen X gets nothing. That's fine. We're used to it. That is what has happened since the beginning of time. 

Eliza Filby 

Well actually, it often depends on when your mother had you. But essentially when looking at millennials in particular being poised and this is I say this in inverted commas, to be the richest generation in history. Gen X will get a quite a lot of that inheritance, that wealth transfer. But this is the critical thing. It will come too late in life, by and large, to spend on yourself. 

Right? So, most of it will skip a generation. 

Marissa Geist 

Of course it will. Of course it will. So, the participation ribbon generation inherits the wealth of the world. That tends to just be poetic. 

Eliza Filby 

Well, so what we have and really this is the dynamic that has really played out since 2008 but will continue to play out, you know, well into the 2050s. Is the family economic unit becoming increasingly important and interdependent. And so, we need to start as businesses seeing our talent in terms of, okay, they've been growing up in an economy where the divide is not between those that have a college degree and those that don't, although obviously that is clear. It’s a deeper layer of privilege, those that have the safety net of mum and dad and those that don't. 

And so, what you're seeing already is that increasing interference, input, stake of mum and dad in their children. So, in 2017, the University of Michigan did a really interesting survey of US businesses across America. And they charted the degree to which the Bank of Mum and Dad was supporting their recruits, their new talent… were involved in the application process, were involved in turning up to the interview, were involved in various aspects of, you know, talent navigation, whether it be skills upgrading or asking for a raise or asking for a promotion. 

So, we've already seen the increasing interference of mum and Dad in college admissions and now job admissions. And actually, what we are really going to see by 2050 is the impact of elder care on workers. So by 2050, actually one of the major areas that businesses will find is really impacting their recruits is not just how much their reliance on the bank of mum and dad, and eventual inheritance when it comes, but how much time they're going to have to devote to looking after mum and dad and elder care, and that is such a big issue that a lot of businesses I don't think are really talking about or realizing is that if Mom and Dad have supported you for the first 30 years of your life, which, by the way, is what parents on average think they foresee them doing as parents. They think that funding one's… Yeah, you pay that back in kind, surely. You know, familial obligation is going to be, as I said, a bigger pull, a bigger draw, a bigger obligation to the individual worker than obligation, loyalty or pull to one's firm, because mum and dad has supported you so fervently, so willingly, so loyally, so beautifully for the first 30 years of your life. 

Marissa Geist 

So, let's assume, the first 30 years of your life, you have not had a child. If you're in this privileged world, this is not the childbearing age. Then the childbearing age comes as the wealth is inherited and you have to care for your elders. Right? So now they’re a sandwich generation. So how if you're thinking about elder care, but also promoting people, having replacement children for our population, so it's not shrinking, how is that going to show up? 

It's like a double consideration for employers. That's a lot of time out to take care of your family. What does that look like? 

Eliza Filby 

So, when we're talking about family, in many respects it's a lottery. You know, it's a lottery of births. Do you have family financial privileges? Do you not? But in many respects, it's also an, I hate to phrase it like this, but it's true, a lottery of death. So how your parents age and ultimately pass away can be either a massive financial and care burden, or a minimal financial and care burden. 

When my father passed away in 2019, he was ill for a very short time, three months. But we also, all three daughters took time off work to look after him, and he never considered himself lucky to have a short illness. But in many respects, he was.  

I was interviewing someone from my book who had to look after her mother for 14 years and it very much hampered her career. It very much hampered her personal relationships. And just going back to the original point, one of the reasons why she undertook that care responsibility for her mother was that she was the only offspring that did not have children, and statistics show that quite often, the carer within the family is the one that has the most time, the least familial complications i.e. potentially the child free person within the family, the childfree offspring. 

But overwhelmingly, as we know, the carers in society, particularly of elderly, are women. So, by 2050, actually, we talk about companies having to think about eldercare policies, but we also need to think about the gender devoid of that elder care, because actually we cannot allow an elder care penalty to develop in a way that a pregnancy penalty has developed for women that have children. 

Men have to be changing catheters, as well as changing nappies in an aging society, and companies have to facilitate and put policies in place to enable sons to be good sons to their elder parents, just as fathers to be good fathers to their children. And I don't see a lot of companies really pioneering the issues around elder care and the gender disadvantage that is so obviously there for women who tend to do most of that care. 

I was wondering, actually, if you work with a lot of companies around the world on this issue. Are you seeing any kind of pioneering work in this space? 

Marissa Geist 

We've seen early discussions, certainly about the elder care. I think this whole sandwich generation of people caring for their children and their parents has come up. The care systems that have been put in place have made tremendous strides for children and particularly for fathers and nontraditional couples, same-sex marriages. We've seen a lot more inclusivity just to make sure that kids are accommodated for. 

I think we're still very rudimentary on the elder care, and certainly not considering gender as an impact, that we could unintentionally structure a complete reversal of the equity we built through the parental leave that we put in place. So, we're seeing companies aware of the fact that this is coming. I think we're not talking about it in terms of the fact that this is going to be the reality for the majority of folks, and when I think about it, not only will we be caring for aging populations, we will be aging ourselves. 

That horizon is not as far away as it once was, unfortunately. So, in my mind, I'm 19 and my actual age I am not. So, we'll be aging as we're taking care of this. How does this impact what we're doing as a company? Because we're going to have aging people taking care of aging parents. Fertility rates are dropping fewer older workers. 

What does that look like for the people that are still actually in the workforce? 

Eliza Filby 

Yeah, and I think that you're absolutely right there. Because Gen X, for example, it's been estimated will live 15% of their life in ill health, IE managing illness. And the expectation is that they will work longer and will want to work longer, but they may not be able to work longer. And I think at the forefront of any company's mind, again, how do you futureproof your business, is thinking about how can I really put health at the center of my offering and my culture for my workers?  

Because it's going to be a core way of retaining and even recruiting that older talent. And I think, you know, sedentary lifestyle is the new smoking as they say sitting is. 

Marissa Geist 

Sitting is the new smoking, of course. 

Eliza Filby 

Right. And the generation where that really is going to be most realized, and the effect of that is going to be most realized, is Gen X, who in most kind of generation to be exposed to it, I think so I think health is going to be one of the core parts of managing and allowing that older generation to flourish as older workers. 

Marissa Geist 

And I just wonder how we've seen all the companies that we're working with. Every single one of them is considering AI and the impacts of AI in the workforce. I think we're having, to some extent the wrong conversations about, is AI going to take jobs? The fear of what AI is going to do. Actually, AI could be a way that aging workers can stay in the workforce for a longer period of time more effectively. 

I think about, you know, the speed of thinking, the agility, the learning new topics. Actually, AI takes away some of that burden from aging workers. And I'm not seeing that conversation as a proactive to say, how do we keep Gen X in the workforce longer? Because if we're all living ‘til we’re, 90, 95, 100, retirement certainly will not stick at 65, but we'll need some help for folks that need to bridge into a new age. 

So, are you seeing anyone talking about AI as a support for an aging workforce? 

Eliza Filby 

I mean, I think you're absolutely right, because so much of the conversation around AI… and automation generally, I think… it's pitted sort of like humans versus AI. And actually, there’s a more collaborative, friendlier approach, may be more productive.  

In all seriousness, I think the key, and I don't know if you'd agree, would be to figure out, particularly when we're talking about generative AI, your critical evaluation skills are absolutely key to working alongside AI. If we're going to have a copilot that helps us do the mundane things, that generates emails for us, that does all these wonderful things, I need to be able to critically evaluate that output. And also, I need to be able to be really informed and specific to input the right stuff. 

And actually, I saw some recent research that showed that when we're talking about generationally, older workers, when using AI are more productive than younger workers when using AI, because they are able to critically evaluate what's good and what's rubbish, because of that wealth of experience.  

I think the in the age of hybrid working where we're colliding less, we're seeing each other less, that mentoring relationship, that teaching through osmosis, through observation is not happening as much was were not colliding as much. One of the really important things I say to businesses is AI is going to enable us not to be more productive, because I don't think tech necessarily always delivers on that promise but enables us to get rid of some of the mundane aspects of work. 

But what we need for that to really thrive and flourish, we need that combination of kind of entrepreneurial tech knowhow that is obvious in the young, and the experience and the critical evaluation skills that is evident there in your older workers. And they need to be talking to each other. They need to be working alongside and learning from each other. 

And it really is reciprocal on that front, in order to really enable AI to flourish in the workplace. For me, I think that's actually where intergenerational collaboration really comes into its own when it comes to AI. 

Marissa Geist 

So, if we think about it, just how fast is the birth rate declining? And do we even have time to adapt the massively reducing workforce, or are we at the precipice of it unknowingly and it's going to come, and we won't be ready? Is it here or is it a reality the next five years? The next ten years? 

Eliza Filby 

So, when we're talking about birth rates and demographics and the aging society, we need to be clear that we're talking about two aspects of that. We're talking about the amount of older people in the population and the rate at which we are having children. Now on both fronts, we are really having a feminine discussion because women tend to outlive men, and obviously women give birth and to a large degree control the birth rate. 

So, one of my gripes about any conversation around demographics is that it's quite often cold, calculated data that actually doesn't really recognize what we're really talking about here, which is the position of women in society. And as we know, that has changed exponentially incredibly, since the 1960s. And let's just reaffirm that the birth rate has halved since 1960. 

And, you know, it's taken some countries, like Iran, for example, to go from nine births per woman to three births per woman. It's taken Iran 20 years. It took the UK 100 years. The speed at which the birth rate has declined is the real issue, right? And the speed at which it’s declined in places like China, particularly off the back of the one child policy, is where suddenly you have serious issues. 

And if it's also happening in geographies with low immigration, that's obviously also a combined problem that becomes very serious politically, economically and obviously for businesses very soon.  

So, there's two aspects to this. Yes, women are having fewer children, but also women have more opportunity than ever before. If we look across the world, various policies have been enacted by governments to encourage women to have more and more children. Most of them have failed.  

Whether we're talking about cheaper childcare, whether we're talking about economic incentives, whether we're talking about various ways in which you know better workplace policies, women don't want to have as many children as women did and have been having throughout history, because there's greater opportunity.  

But there are, having said that, really important things that workplaces can do to make women feel that it's possible to have children. I think for a long time, particularly corporate environments, women have felt that they've had to sort of coerce their fertility into the corporate ladder, and that there was a point and a time when they could have children. 

And we know that the career cycle and the fertility cycle are at odds. And one of the kind of really interesting work that I've been doing, kind of focus groups with Gen Zers who've grown up with professional working mothers is a lot of them will say, you know, my mum has always told me that I've got to really think about my fertility and when I want to have children, whereas when I was their age, I was off the back of all these lectures, you know, don't get pregnant too young, you know, it's like a sort of societal sin to be pregnant at 16. 

And so, the conversation around women's fertility is changing quite fundamentally. And this is why you getting companies, you know, encourage doing egg freezing perks and all of these kinds of enablers to alleviate women's fears around their fertility.  

Now, I think that's hugely problematic. And I'm not a fan of some of those initiatives, but I do think it’s at least, and I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, an attempt to address real concerns that essentially, women don't feel like the workplace is a place where they can have children and be a mother or the mother they want to be. 

Marissa Geist 

You know when you said that the career cycle and the fertility cycle or at odds, even the way you talked about like freezing eggs, it sounds so ridiculous to say we have a society that really wants more children, but we're trying to stuff the way that we have children into the way that we have traditionally made money. I had my first child in my early 20s, which was unheard of in my friend group, just to have a child that young was, it was, like you said, not societal, but certainly younger than many people. 

I think that actually helped me. I have four kids. Once you actually have a child and you figure out you can have a career and a child, it's less scary than, oh, if I hit pause and I'm 32 now and I'm jumping into the game, it's almost like we're giving the most cursory look, instead of saying we can actually go back to natural childbearing years if society and not society but companies actually thought about, how can we talk about this from the beginning, and how can we make sure that the career ladder isn't… you're not hopping off and hopping back on. It's actually just part of it, just like eldercare is. I think we're not going to be able to draw those boundaries to say, and this is the time when you have your first internship, and this is the time when you work 50 hours a week or 50 hours in three days. 

And, you know, I think it's just even the way you said it, just challenging that idea of course people aren't doing it. We had babies in spite of work, not because it was encouraged at work. We made it work. 

Eliza Filby 

I think it's just… it's changing amongst Gen Zers, which I think is encouraging. But I certainly remember when I entered my professional years and obviously, we are talking about professional careers here. You know, very much, I think we need to be super aware that actually birth rates and indeed age ranges differ across the economic, social divides. 

But I think the idea that women had to get to a certain point in their career and then have children, what that has created is actually women have become incredibly efficient breeders in the last 20 years. So, they're having fewer children, they're having them closer together, and they're having them later in life.  

And that for me, I find incredibly uncomfortable because in a way, the career, as I said, cycle has cajoled women to adapt the choices around birthing to fit it, whereas actually the real conversation we should be having, and actually I'm seeing Gen Z start to have this conversation, is do we need to be everything's set? 

They've grown up in a much more unstable time. So, there's sort of the idea of everything being ducks in a row, everything being fixed is, I think, much more of an anathema to them. So, they're questioning that sort of millennial narrative, that Gen-X narrative is you have to have everything in place, but also, they're much more fluid in their careers. 

The idea that you work at a law firm, and you become partner before you have children, or just after you've had children or before you’re 40 or whatever seems antithesis to a life that they potentially see as lasting 100 years. It's on average, been estimated that Gen Z will have over 15 different employers over the course of their working life, and five different careers. 

Fluidity and a much less set life plan is, I think, a real characteristic of that generation. I think that's off the back of the life plan not working out for millennials. 

Marissa Geist 

Yes. Well, I think they saw a lot of people struggle with that. Wait too long to do things, you know, shifting companies, not having that loyalty. Like you said, it's why would I put this work in when I don't know if this work is going to be here? I'm not going to shape my whole life around a career that I'm not sure is going to be here. 

So, as we head to the year 2050, then, certainly social and individual needs and wants and desires are going to shape how we think about this. But is it up to companies as opposed to politicians to really make this happen? Since you said a lot of the policies have just fallen flat, so is this our corporate mandate to make sure that we're not just keeping on, keeping on? 

Eliza Filby 

I think the first sort of really positive note, and I don't want this to be all sort of negative conversation. 

Marissa Geist 

Other than this. It's great. We are headed for huge success. 

Eliza Filby 

Yes, we're in a good place, people. Yes, life is good. I think the 21st century is about no fixed plan, whereas I think the late 20th was very much a fixed plan. And, you know, it's education. It was working, it was retirement. And I think on all three of those, they're being upended. But when it comes to what the family looks like, and we're already seeing this and this is a positive thing, is we can't make assumptions anymore about what women should be doing in their 20s, what women should be doing in their 30s, that women shouldn't be having babies in their 40s or even 50s. 

I think the workplace has been sort of fixated on these set of assumptions. And actually, I think we're moving into an era when those assumptions are falling away, and that's ultimately a good thing, and that we can't make this assumption about what life people's lives look like, whether it means babies, whether it means college, whether it means retirement, whether it means, you know, a mum and dad, you know, the increasing rise as you spoken to of, you know, same sex couples but also blended families. 

You know, I talked about the bank of mum and dad. Most families now are complicated and rich and full in terms of what they even look like. So, I think that the script almost needs ripping up because the rules have been broken.  

Now, I would add to that as well, is that you're seeing increasing numbers, particularly in America, rise of female breadwinners and what complications that brings to the family because it inevitably does even just, you know, logistically, let's say, but also kind of in the assumptions. 

I mean, I'm the female breadwinner in my house at the moment. And I say at the moment because interestingly, over the course of my marriage, it's flipped twice. And that's I think those kind of that dynamic and dual income households is the norm now.  

Who gets the phone call when the child is sick in school? It's the mom. 

Marissa Geist 

Yes, my husband and I have this all the time because it's just like you said. It's flipped in our family several times, but you're very hard pressed to get the phone call first to the father. And even, you know, my husband volunteered on a field trip, and he said, you know, I mean, he was celebrated as, like, the most attentive dad ever, because it's like they never go on field trips. 

So, I do think your point about this isn't a conversation just about work. This is a conversation about families. It's a conversation about equity. And it's a conversation about making sure we don't reverse back in because there's that precipice that's out there that we could fall back into. Well, the women will just pick it up, and then that's not going to work for society yet again. I don't think the women will accept it this time. 

Eliza Filby 

I also think there's a really interesting conversation happening about education, because it's the same with gender, is that we assume certain things and those certain things are being upended. And I think one of the most successful things I've… and I think this will continue to happen in the next 20 years… is companies looking beyond the college degree. Whether Wall Street is starting to reject the Ivy League or the switch to apprenticeships straight from school or degree apprenticeships, college degrees that are about earning whilst you learn. 

I think we are at a reckoning point for education, tertiary education where the massive expansion of college across the world, particularly for women. Let's remember that women are the great winners in the tertiary education expansion. Women outnumber men and have done well in America, have done really since the 90s. But the idea that it's the natural route or the only route I think is deeply problematic. 

And actually, quite often companies that look to school-leavers will find the most loyal, the most deferential and the most committed recruits in their company from school, rather than those that are straight from college. 

Marissa Geist 

So, Eliza, there are currently 3.5 billion of us working today with an average age of 39. How will those stats change by 2050? 

Eliza Filby 

I'm happy to say that the estimation is that the average worker will be age 45 in 2050, but that is an estimation that I think is hard to say whether it will be realized or not. I suspect the age will be older than that and particularly older in places like Europe, but it's conditioned by a lot of things. Infant mortality rates in Africa, for example. The age of retirement is another factor.  

But what we do know is that currently in most organizations, not all depending on the sector, the young outweigh the old. And I think by 2050, most organizations, the older workers and that is remember, I would argue over 35ers will outweigh the younger cohorts. 

And that hugely impacts culture, learning environment and critically, innovation and entrepreneurship. And that's what I think businesses need to be super aware of. 

Marissa Geist 

I do want to pull on your point as far as mentorship as well, because that knowledge transfer has to be purposeful. If you have that over 35 and a younger cohort that maybe is anxious to be entrepreneurial and innovative, but lacking the critical thinking and experience, that is a really challenging dynamic to pull together. 

Eliza Filby 

Absolutely. 

Marissa Geist 

Speaking of the elderly and the older workers, what will employers have to do to tempt the independently wealthy back into work? 

Eliza Filby 

Flexibility. Flexibility, not just in terms of location, but in terms of role, in terms of pay, in terms of incentives, in terms of perks… just that flexibility, that sort of bespoke bolt on approach. Unilever do a brilliant modeling of this called uni work, which I think is a really interesting model that is really appealing to would-be retirees, and that's who you want to get. 

Marissa Geist 

And is the great inheritance or the great wealth transfer a one-time thing? Well, the inheritance taxes and human nature mean those inheriting between now and 2050 will not pass that wealth on. 

Eliza Filby 

I think it's the sort of societal truth that by the third generation, they squandered the money that the first generation made… 

Marissa Geist 

By 2050, we'll call it the Great Reset. Then all the money's gone. 

Eliza Filby 

I think what is interesting is that we have, for the last ten years talked about millennial disadvantage and that solidarity is breaking down now because the money from their parents is trickling down. And across the US, the bank of Mum and Dad's put somewhere between 40 and 60% mortgages through a deposit. So that money is transferring already.  

By the 2050s it would have leapt a generation to Gen Alpha and potentially also Gen Z. 

So, you would have seen that wealth inequality, not income inequality, wealth inequality being particularly pronounced amongst Gen Alpha and Gen Z, perhaps even more so than millennials. And that will play out at work because essentially, we will be living in an inheritocracy where it's not what you earn that's important. It's not what you learn that defines opportunity, but what you're inheriting from the bank of Mum and Dad. 

Marissa Geist 

The Bank of Mum and Dad, the Inheritocracy. That is a great way to end the segment to think about, in 2050, we will be having a much different conversation than right now. And again, I have a couple key takeaways, not the least of which is: Gen X, of course, we get sandwiched in between the earners and the inheritors, but this has been such a great conversation. 

The considerations that companies need to have for flexibility, like you said, inequality and the responsibility of making sure the conversation doesn't inadvertently take us back 50 years of equality, I think is really, really important. 

And I just want to say thank you for your view thank you so much for joining. Really appreciate it. 

Eliza Filby 

Real pleasure. Thank you. 

Marissa Geist 

Join me next time on the trip to work 2050 in The Talent Time Machine.  

To catch the next episode or hear from my previous guests, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform.  

This episode was edited by Matt Covarrubias and produced by Dusty Weis at Podcamp Media... with the support of Sarah Smelik, John McCarron and Laura Pykett of Heavenly and the team at Cielo of Sally Hunter, Annamarie Andrews and Susie Schuppel-Paul.  

For Cielo, thanks for listening... I'm Marissa Geist.