Baby Boomers Mortgage The number of Australians aged 50 to 65 who are still paying off their mortgage has doubled since the turn of the century. Data from AustraliaSCAN, the annual national snapshot from social researcher David Chalke, also shows that nearly six out of 10 people aged 50 to 65 - the upwardly mobile baby boomer generation - are concerned they won't have sufficient income for retirement. "What they would hope to do is rapidly add to superannuation in the last 10 to 15 years of their working life ... but that's far more difficult if they are still paying off their mortgage," Mr Chalke said. The net result is a significant number of people will have to "rapidly downsize." AustraliaSCAN has provided a national snapshot of attitudes and values for the past 20 years, based on interviews with 2000 people. In 2000, it found 18 per cent of people aged 50 to 65 were still paying off their homes; in 2013, it has grown to 35 per cent. "What's happened is the baby boomers were more mobile than the previous generation," Mr Chalke said. They were more likely, he said, to have changed house, job and even career direction. And so they are more likely to be encumbered by a mortgage in the home stretch to retirement. In contrast, he said, the generation born out of the Depression and World War II "would have been married at 20, bought their home at 21, and paid it off by 50. They were far less likely to have changed their career or even their address. That's how Australia was. But not any more. Mr Chalke said the trend of upwardly mobile Australians caught short in later life "will arguably accelerate." Australians currently aged 35 to 40 "are coupling later, having kids much later and are well into their 30s before taking on mortgages. We'd expect by the time they reach 50 to 65, a greater percentage will still be paying off their homes. The proportion is growing as each year goes by.