I recently reached one of those landmark birthdays which, literally overnight, transfer you seamlessly into a new, if slightly greyer, age band. While I still feel as though I belong in the 15-24 age group, there is in reality one category to which, if the European Commission’s 2012 Ageing Report is accurate, I have moved slightly closer.

According to the Commission, the number of Britons aged over 65 will rise from 16 per cent currently to 25 per cent in 20 years time and I will be one of them.

What’s even more startling is the speed with which the ratio of pensioners to workers increases over the same period.

In 2010, across Europe, the figure was 39 per cent, but by 2060, it will have risen to 71 per cent. In countries such as Poland and Romania, the ratio will have reached an astonishing 90 per cent.

All around us, we see evidence of the ‘baby boomer’ generation retiring at a noticeably faster rate than say, a decade ago (because proportionally, there are more of them) and being inundated with advertisements for worldwide cruises, senior property complexes and aids to assist increasingly creaky bones.

People who have worked and saved throughout their lives rightly feel entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labours but because there are so many of them, the cost of providing pensions for these folks is careering through the roof.

In one respect, this ‘problem’ is being addressed as new. Later official retirement ages are being phased in over the coming two decades, a process which effectively delays state spending on pensions, but it is not enough.

I suspect that by 2060, the official retirement will be close to 75, or even higher.

People in their 20s and 30s reading this may feel this is a problem likely to be solved by the time they reach retirement. But this does not seem likely. Indeed, there is a strong probability the state will no longer be able to afford anything other than a token contribution to pensioners’ living costs in 40-odd years time.

I have mentioned before that the sleight of hand which makes people believe their National Insurance Contributions are somehow ring-fenced and invested to provide their pension is, unfortunately, untrue. Your NICs are another tax. Nothing else. But it transpires that we have another problem.

As the first batch of baby boomers started approaching retirement, so pension schemes increasingly began shifting out of equities and into lower risk bonds. In many pension funds, the proportion of bond holdings now exceeds equities for the first time in half a century.

Moreover, as bonds offer fixed returns, insurers buy more of them as people begin drawing their pension and buying annuities, which depresses the bond yield as well as their availability.

Pension funds are required to invest in the best quality assets available to them, but as many mature at the same rate as their members, they are having to avoid investing in equities, even though shares, while volatile, generally out-perform fixed-interest products such as bonds over the medium to longer-term.

This is one matter all of us, irrespective of age, must address sooner rather than later.