Why education is no longer the best way to invest in your child’s future

Teenagers have never exactly been short of things to complain about to their parents. You didn’t give them enough support, sent them to the wrong schools, stopped them going to the right parties, or didn’t get them the latest iPhone. But Generation Rent, perhaps stirred up by too much time spent reading Ed Miliband’s Twitter feed, are likely to be especially aggrieved. To add to the traditional litany of charges from the younger generation against the older can be added one that might even have a kernel of truth in it — you stole our future.

There is a case to be made that the big divide in British society, as indeed in most developed economies, is not between classes, races, religions or regions, but between generations. The Baby Boomers benefited from rising real incomes, economic growth, soaring property prices, a bull market in stocks, free university education and, perhaps most helpful of all, generous final salary pension schemes.