As ever the politics of the past week has been dominated by retirees and the issue of “deeming rates”. It says something about our political debate that we just had an election fought with lies and scare campaigns about the impact of the ALP’s policies for retirees and since then the biggest issue aside from tax has been on an issue that actually does affect retirement incomes.

And while we can suggest maybe the ALP should have brought up the issue during the election campaign and not after, to be honest, as a Gen Xer I’m just utterly fed up with it all.

Now sure, deeming rates and how they affect retirees’ incomes is important, but the overall emphasis placed on current retirees is completely out of whack with the pressing economic issues of this country.

Deeming rate cuts do not go far enough, pensioners tell Morrison government Read more

The big retirement scare for us as a country is not how those currently retired are coping, but what is in store for those hoping to do so in the next 10 to 20 years.

Last week, as one does when you reach a certain age, I spent a bit of time mucking about on sites that I found after searching: “How much money do I need to retire?”

I’m 20 years from retirement age and so am at the point where having consolidated all my super accounts (I had four of them) I’m now thinking about what I need to do to be able to retire at 67 ... 68 ... 70?

And when looking at these sites, such as the Asic “money smart” site, you notice one nice little sentence below the table estimating how much you need to retire either “modestly” or “comfortably” that should be written in flashing lights.

The sentence is: “The table below ... assumes you own your home.”

It should also be an issue that is flashing red for our politicians and media.

Last Friday the latest household wealth and income survey results led to some dumb reporting about how suddenly “Australians are millionaires” because on average the wealth of all Australian households is $1.02m. Only 30% of households have more than $1m in wealth, but so rich are some that it skews the overall average.

It was all rather silly and ignored the massive issue highlighted in the survey: that the main wealth asset for Australians – home ownership – is dropping quickly.

I noted last week that overall home ownership – including both those who have a mortgage and those who have paid it off – has fallen from 73% in 2000-01 to just 65%.

But when we look at the breakdown of ages we see the massive problem coming for future retirees – and it is one that largely was not an issue for current retirees.

In 2017-18 something happened that has never occurred before: more 55-64-year-olds were still paying off a mortgage than owned their home outright:

At the turn of the century, 64% of people in their pre-retirement years lived in a house owning no mortgage; now it is just 37%.

Forty per cent of such households are still paying a mortgage compared with 20% in 2000.

The percent of renters aged 55-64 has also risen in that time from 14.7% to 21.0%.

And this is where that nice little sentence in the superannuation guides comes back with a vengeance. Because “assumes you own your home” means assumes you have paid off the mortgage.

If you go to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia’s retirement guide, none of the budget expenses for “ASFA Retirement Standard for retirees” include rent or mortgage repayments.

For those aged 44-54, the issue is even more stark. Sure, you got to listen to Nirvana while at uni, but take a look at how few of you own a home compared with those 20 years older than you:

In 2000, almost as many 44-54-year-olds had paid off their mortgage as held one. Now 55% have a mortgage and just 17% have paid it off.

Over the past 30 years, the amount of 65+ year-olds who have paid off their mortgage is just under double the amount of 45-54-year-olds who had done so 20 years earlier.

Thirty-nine percent of those aged 45-54 in 2000 had paid off a mortgage. That age cohort is now over 65 which has 74% owning a home outright.

It suggest that with just 16.9% of 45-54-year-olds at the moment having paid off their home, in 20 years that will see only around 32% of retirees having done so.

Right now our retirement systems operates with three-quarters of retirees owning a home; in 20 years it will need to work with less than a third doing so.

To cope we’re going to need big changes – older people living with children more than now perhaps – and it will also require greater reliance on aged pensions and social housing. But aged pensions and housing require tax revenue, and the number of prime aged workers – those who earn the most and pay the most taxes – is shrinking:

And we also have a government that has just decided that in five years’ time it should drastically shrink the tax base.

A lower percentage of people earning high incomes combined with less tax being gathered from those workers while home ownership rates fall.

It’s a recipe for disaster, and it is one that the fixation on current retirees utterly ignores.

• Greg Jericho writes on economics for Guardian Australia