Don’t fear the boomers! How Poland is celebrating its old people – and making life better for every age

On a balmy Friday afternoon earlier this month, the most feared group of people in Europe breached the 13th-century defensive walls of Wrocław and poured into the town square. Some wore blue berets, others cowboy hats, straw boaters and, in one instance, a three-tiered cake stand adorned with kitchen sponges and pompoms. Resistance was futile: less than an hour after their arrival, the mayor ceremonially handed over the key to the Polish city’s gate to the flamboyantly dressed couple they had chosen as their queen and king.

Baby boomers are often talked of as an existential threat to Europe’s economic prosperity and welfare state model. The population of men and women born in the mid-1940s to mid-60s, who are now in their 60s, 70s and 80s, is calculated by the World Health Organization to have overtaken people younger than 15 in Europe this year, and it is estimated people over 65 will make up more than 30% of the EU’s population by 2100. They are forecast to leave workplaces understaffed and healthcare services overwhelmed. Economists talk of them in terms of natural catastrophes (“the silver tsunami”) or acts of terrorism (“the demographic bomb”).

Yet Wrocław, Poland’s fourth largest city, is not keeping its elderly citizens at arm’s length, but hugging them close. At the annual “march of hats”, they are invited to parade through the city in festive attire and extravagant headgear. A marching band leads them to a stage outside the town hall, where the most innovative headdresses are awarded prizes (a teacup fascinator made of cardboard and a ceramic top hat beat the competition this year). The crowds then pair up to shake their tail feathers to the hits of their youth. The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand and Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Shoes boom out of the speakers as dancing couples swirl around the cobbled square.

The point of the gathering is to challenge what behaviour is considered appropriate for old age. “My grandmother was very strict and religious, and she dressed almost like a nun,” says pensioner Ewa Rapacz, 80. “My mother socialised more, but her priority was her house and garden. For me, the most important thing is to be around people.”

One of the approximately 180,000 retirees who make up just under a third of the Lower Silesian capital’s population, Rapacz is an enthusiastic participant of drama workshops funded by the city’s administration and an active organiser of a group of seniors who meet to play games from their childhood. “People my age often feel undervalued and overlooked,” she says, wearing a homemade hat with the slogan Ocaleni (“survivors”) and a bright red tassled T-shirt. “But not me: I feel very recognised, and how could you overlook me in this outfit?”

The march of hats kicks off a month of festivities and activities, including a gala night at the Wrocław Opera, Nordic walking trips to the surrounding countryside, film nights, workshops on dealing with online scammers, and open-air painting sessions.

“We want to give the seniors of Wrocław a chance to show a different face: not grey and sad, but dignified and elegant,” says Robert Pawliszko, the head of Wrocław’s senior centre, who has been involved in organising the march of hats for 15 years. “Some people say older people are a burden – we want to demonstrate they have a purpose and a goal.”

That attitude is remarkable considering that Poland is feeling the crunch of demographic change more acutely than other parts of the continent. By 2035, the country’s overall population is forecast to decrease by 1.5 million people, while the number of citizens over the retirement age (60 for women and 65 for men) is set to rise rapidly – a trend reflected across the former eastern bloc. According to Eurostat, people aged 80 years and over will account for 15% of the EU’s population by the year 2100, a two-and-a-half-fold increase.

At some point, these people will need looking after, but the younger generation is hardly rushing to the rescue. Perhaps surprisingly considering the role that Catholicism still plays in Polish society, the country has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe (alongside other traditionally Catholic countries like Italy and Spain). Young Poles are having children later in life, or not at all. As a result, authorities estimate that by the year 2035 there will be 215 care-giving relatives for every 100 seniors in need of care, down from almost 300 in 2018.

Yet among researchers who are studying the ways in which municipalities can prepare for an ageing society, Polish cities like Wrocław – and its easterly neighbour Kraków – are increasingly being held up as pioneers for other parts of Europe to follow.

Both cities are among those in Europe with the highest number of universities of the third age, offering taught higher education programmes for retirees. In Wrocław, a city of 680,000 people, there are 10 such lifelong-learning institutions; Kraków has six. Since 2014, Wrocław has also had a “council of seniors” – an elected body of older citizens who meet six times a year and cooperate with the city council and the mayor’s office to alert them to the everyday challenges faced by pensioners.

Kraków has introduced a scheme where those aged 70+ or with a significant degree of disability, wanting to visit departed friends, can order a microcar that will take them to the graves of their loved ones for free. Those in single-person households can also call up a “golden handyman” who will help them replace lightbulbs, fix broken switches or unclog a blocked drain for no extra charge. And the city directly funds 50 “centres of activity” that are open every day from 10am to 3pm, and whose municipal support is contingent on them coming up with activities that bring together seniors and younger people.

“We have meeting points for the elderly in Germany too”, said Niklas Rathsmann of Germany’s Körber Foundation, which recently brought a delegation of German lawmakers to the southern Polish city to learn from its innovations. “But in Poland they have been much quicker to realise that these centres need to offer something more exciting than bingo nights. In Germany we tend to focus on the deficits – in Poland they are good at looking at the potential.”

“In the Netherlands we complain about old people all the time”, says Joost van Hoof, a professor of urban ageing at The Hague University of Applied Sciences who has been researching age-friendly cities since 2007. “Even politicians who rely on these people as their voters do it. But I never hear that kind of negative rhetoric from Poland.”

Terms like “silver tsunami” are Van Hoof’s bugbear. “It’s too alarmist. It’s an enormous blessing that we no longer have to prepare to wave goodbye to our loved ones when they turn 65.” Europe’s 70-75 age cohort, especially, are not yet people in need, but mostly healthy, mobile and more affluent than previous generations. “These people are a great untapped resource, whether as childcare support or as consumers eager to spend their pension money on cultural offerings.” Polish cities like Wrocław, he says, are one of the continent’s few municipalities to seize on these opportunities.

Dorota Skoczylas is only 56, but her journey speaks of the city’s proactive attitude to demographic change. A trained banker with 30 years’ experience in debit and credit services, Skoczylas has for the last 10 years juggled her career with caring for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s and related illnesses.

“As a carer and a banker I became very aware of the challenges that digital services pose for senior citizens, and I wanted to share my expertise,” she says. She approached a Polish bank with a proposal to organise training courses for elderly customers on its behalf, but got no reply. The employment office in Wrocław, however, spotted her potential to boost what it calls the “silver economy” and gave her a grant to retrain during the pandemic. She now hosts workshops in accounting, digital banking and online shopping at the city’s care homes, senior activity centres and universities of the third age.

“For a long time, the only question the state asked itself about seniors was how to say goodbye to them,” Skoczylas says. “Now that attitude is changing. These people may not have the internet skills yet, but they have a vast amount of experience and knowledge.”

Belatedly, the private sector is being made to catch up. Poland’s government, which has one of Europe’s only ministers for senior affairs, this April passed an act that from June next year obliges banks to provide in-branch hardware and personalised advice on how to use its online services. “It will be a revolution,” says Skoczylas.

Ageing societies will also need to help their oldest members with simpler tasks, such as crossing roads. Restructuring urban architecture is costly, especially in cities with historic centres like Wrocław, a key trade hub en route to the Black Sea since the 12th century. Most of the bus stops in the city centre have in recent years been fitted with “Vienna-style” raised platforms to ease boarding for senior citizens, though work remains to be done in the suburbs.

Urban planners working with the council say demographic change is not so much a burden as an opportunity to make the city better for everyone. After Poland joined the EU in 2004, a lot of funds went into revamping public squares like Wrocław’s Nowy Targ by plastering them with concrete and stone, recalls Jan Kazak, an associate professor at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences. “They were horrible, like pens for animals, and got really hot in the summer.”

Consultations with senior citizens prompted a rethink, though, and this summer the city completed Nowy Targ Square’s second revamp in the space of a decade, with plenty of trees to provide shade. “Once you start thinking about how to make cities more age-friendly, you end up with solutions very similar to the ones dictated by the need to react to climate change,” says Kazak.

To a large extent, Poland’s positive attitude is driven by cultural factors that are hard to replicate in other countries. Religion plays a role: according to the country’s 2023 census, 71% of its population still identify as Roman Catholic. Polish television still nurtures the stereotype of the Polish babcia (grandmother) whose everyday wisdom safeguards the wellbeing of an the entire family, through characters such as Barbara Mostowiak, the heroine of popular soap opera M jak miłość (L for Love), played by 87-year-old Teresa Lipowska.

In Wrocław, which was previously known by its German name Breslau, there is an additional factor at play. Between 1945 and 1947, after the allies decided the city should be part of Poland, it was the scene of one of the largest population transfers in European history, when roughly 500,000 German-speakers left and native Poles settled in the city.

Some of the city’s age-friendly schemes still speak to this moment in Wrocław’s history. With so-called “senior cards”, residents aged 60+ can gain free entry to museums and theatres and get discounts on healthcare services, but special privileges are reserved for those aged 90 and over. They are eligible to apply for the “emerald” senior card, which entitles them to free house visits from hairdressers, dentists and cleaners. “For the generation who rebuilt the city after the second world war, mere financial support and discounts wouldn’t have been appropriate,” says Kazak. “The city also wants to pay them respect and say thank you.”

Strip away the warm words, and the economic reality of many senior citizens in Poland isn’t quite so cosy. The country’s economy is on the up, recording the fastest GDP growth in the EU this year, but many older people have little in the way of savings, and pensions in the country are less than half the EU average. “The best places to grow old in Europe are undoubtedly those with solid retirement schemes, like Switzerland, Norway or Denmark,” says Van Hoof. “But places like Wrocław and Kraków make up for it by being innovative on a limited budget.”

They have also come to realise the most common misconception about the “silver tsunami”. “Old people are not a homogeneous group,” says Jolanta Perek-Białas, an associate professor at Kraków University’s Institute of Sociology. Some older people do sports into their 80s, others prefer to stay at home. Some are on Facebook and WhatsApp, others don’t even have bank accounts. “They don’t all want to fit into the same box. Maybe let’s remember that George Clooney is 63 – he’s about to become an older person too.”

• This article was amended on 19 September 2024. It is people over 65, rather than “boomers” as an earlier version said, who it is estimated will make up more than 30% of the EU’s population by 2100.