Rising health cares costs for the elderly mean that the UK faces one of the largest bills for 
elderly care of any leading industrialised nation, threatening to undermine the bonds between parents and their children, a major international study has found.
And the research also suggests that Britain’s high level of family breakdown will make the problem worse as smaller and more complex families meant there would be fewer people to provide “informal care” to frail relatives in future.
New research to be presented this week suggests that a combination of low birth rates and rising life expectancy will force the UK to spend an extra £80 billion each year on pensions, long-term care and the health service by 2050.
The mounting costs will leave working adults facing a triple blow of higher taxes, longer working lives and less inherited wealth as their parents are forced to sell property to pay for care, the study said.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which conducted the research, warned that workers may be unable or unwilling to take time off to look after elderly relatives or pay more tax to support rising numbers of older people in future.
In order to preserve goodwill, the elderly will have to stay in work for longer and save more towards their own private pensions so that they are seen to be fending for themselves, the study said.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the OECD’s leading pensions analyst warned that Britain’s ageing population, combined with already high rates of family breakdown, meant relations between the old and the young are under threat.
The UK has unusally high rates of family breakdown, with more than 12pc of British children living in step families, compared with an OECD average of 8pc, and more single parents.
Edward Whitehouse, the organisation’s head of pensions policy analysis, said the UK was projected to have “among the highest long-term care expenditures by 2050” of any of the 28 countries examined.
“I don’t think that future governments will be able to afford that, which brings us on to how we are going to pay for that system,” he said. “The money has got to be found from somewhere. It is going to have to be higher taxes or cuts in public spending on other programmes.”
The research suggested that by 2050, the UK will be forced to spend 21pc of GDP on long-term care, pensions and health services to cope with the rise in elderly people requiring state assistance.
This is an increase from 16.5pc of GDP spent in 2010, and equates to a rise of about £80 billion in today’s terms.
It is estimated that between now and 2050, 11 million Britons will reach the age of 100. Economists have estimated that the international cost of ageing populations will be 10 times that resulting from the financial crisis.
Last week, the pensions minister, Steve Webb, warned that the UK must radically re-think the idea of retirement as life expectancy continues to lengthen.
Plans are in place to raise the state pension age to 66 and the default retirement age of 65 has already been abolished.
Last night, David Willetts, the universities minister, backed the OECD for setting out the “inevitable” burden Britain faces “as the baby boomers age”.
The OECD analysis, which will be presented in Paris this week, suggested that to pay for the care and pensions that an ageing population will need, adults will be forced to spend much longer working and taxes may have to rise.
According to the OECD’s figures, Britain’s projected bill for long-term care and support services – such as home help, adaptations to property, and residential accommodation – will almost double from 2.2pc of GDP to 4.3pc by 2050.
Of the 28 OECD countries included in the research, only Malta and Spain will be spending a higher proportion of national income on long-term care.
But the research on “intergenerational solidarity” warned that the rising bill for elderly care could “undermine the nexus of family relations between generations”.
The OECD report said: “Future generations may be less willing and able to pay continually rising taxes to support a growing share of economically inactive people.”