This statistic shows the distribution of elderly population (aged 65 and over) as a share of population in the United Kingdom (UK) from 1976 to 2046. Over this 70 year period the share of elderly people within the population of the UK is expected to increase by over ** percent, reaching **** percent of the forecast total population of 2046.

Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 adult survivors of childhood liver transplants. Each interview was conducted at a place of the participant's choice, with the majority of interviews undertaken at participants' homes. These followed a topic guide created from the clinical and social science literature, plus the experience of one of the research team of nursing children post liver transplant during the 1980s. In addition, individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight clinicians involved in the childhood liver transplant programme, which gave context to the transplant recipients' data. Interviews lasted 82 minutes on average (range 20-163 minutes). All were audio-recorded with the participant's permission, transcribed verbatim, anonymised, and imported into NVivo for data analysis. Alongside the profound social and economic changes arising from general population ageing, the past half century has seen the emergence of ‘new’ ageing populations. These populations have arisen through rapid medical progress in tandem with changes in social attitudes to issues surrounding disability and chronic illness.This has led to increasing numbers of people with rare and/or complex disease or disability living considerably longer lives than was historically possible. Many are pioneers; facing issues as they age that have never before been encountered, either by themselves or by professionals leading their treatment and care. One such new ageing population is the first cohort of pediatric liver transplant recipients in the world. Childhood liver transplantation began in the early-mid 1980s in Britain and North America.Thirty years later, many of the British pioneers, still receiving specialist care, are living adult lives. While clinical outcomes are documented, social and ontological issues for these adults, who have lived their whole lives within the context of their body as a project, have never been studied. Through in-depth interviews with transplant recipients and clinicians, we aim to explore both the health and social implications of living with transplanted livers from infancy and wider existential questions surrounding such transforming ‘experimental’ surgery. We sampled the first ten years of the paediatric liver transplant programme (1984-1994) at Addenbrooke’s hospital, Cambridge, where the programme began in the UK, and at King’s College Hospital, London, which had strong ties to Addenbrooke’s and also began liver transplant surgery during this time. We included those who had had a liver-only transplant at age 13 years or younger, as we were interested to talk to adults who had lived the majority of their life as a transplant pioneer and who had not reached adolescence at the time of their surgery. Letters of invitation and study information were sent by the two hospitals to eligible patients, who were asked to contact the study team if interested. All participants were assured anonymity and confidentiality, and that the research team did not know who the letters had been sent to until an individual chose to reply to the invitation. Early hospital data for the cohort is patchy, as many pioneer recipients have been lost to follow-up, although from discussion with clinicians we believe we interviewed around half of the 1984-1994 surviving UK cohort; around 60 were known to fit our criteria at the time of recruitment.

In 2023, there were approximately ***** million millennials in the United Kingdom, making it the largest generational cohort at that time. Millennials surpassed the Baby Boomer generation as the largest generation for the first time in 2019. The two youngest generations, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, numbered approximately **** million, and *** million respectively. Gen X are, as of the most recent year, the second-largest generation in the UK at ***** million people, with their parent's generation, the Silent Generation, numbering around *** million people in the same year. There were estimated to be ****** people who belonged to the Greatest Generation, the parents of the Baby Boomer generation, who lived through major events such as the Great Depression and World War Two. Post-War Baby Boom The baby boomer generation was the largest generation for much of this period due to the spike in births that happened after the Second World War. In 1947, for example, there were over *** million live births in the United Kingdom, compared with just ******* live births just thirty years later in 1977. Members of this generation are typically the parents of millennials, and were the driving force behind the countercultural movement of the 1960s, due to their large numbers relative to older generations at the time. The next generational cohort after Boomers are Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980. This generation had fewer members than the Boomer generation for most of its existence, and only became larger than it in 2021. Millennials and Gen Z As of 2022, the most common single year of age in the United Kingdom in 2020 was 34, with approximately ******* people this age. Furthermore, people aged between 30 and 34 were the most numerous age group in this year, at approximately 4.67 million people. As of 2022, people in this age group were Millennials, the large generation who came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Many members of this generation entered the workforce following the 2008 financial crash, and suffered through high levels of unemployment during the early 2010s. The generation that followed Millennials, Generation Z, have also experienced tough socio-economic conditions recently, with key formative years dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and an increasingly unstable geopolitical situation.