Much rot is spoken about how the young have it so bad. In fact, this generation is healthier, richer and better-educated than any before — as well as being better-behaved and more conscientious than their parents were. But the one area where they do struggle is in buying a house. The asset boom of recent years has disfigured the economy, sending property prices soaring and conferring vast wealth on pensioners while giving the young a mountain to climb. Home ownership rates stand at a 30-year low. And the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds in private rented accommodation has almost doubled in the last ten years.
This marks not just a dramatic socioeconomic shift in a country that was once strongly associated with owning your own home. (Britain now has the fifth-lowest ownership rate in Europe.) It also represents the rapid growth of a significant new political constituency: people who were brought up in owner-occupied homes but who must now bring up their own children in rented ones.
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