this video was brought to you by ground news. Last week, the UK Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, appeared on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Nominally, this appearance was meant to be about this week's budget. In the interview, though, Jeremy Hunt was asked a series of questions about the widening generational divide in the UK, specifically when it comes to home ownership. So in this video, we're going to have a look at generational inequality in the UK and how this interacts with housing. We'll also have a look at whether this has become a more significant problem in recent years. [Music] Thank you. On Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Kuenssberg asserted that younger people find it harder to get on the housing ladder, asking the Chancellor why this might be. After a bit of a non-answer, Kuenssberg interjected, Even after the pandemic, we've kept unemployment at historically low levels. But let me ask you, in a practical sense, though, because this is what it means for members of the public, we had an email from one of our viewers.

Phil who's asked asked us to ask you what should I say to my hard-working graduate son. He has to live in London for his job. He's never going to be able to afford to buy a home unless I buy it for him. If I help him, how will I afford nursing home fees when I need them. What was your advice be to him. What I would say is that there's no easy fix. If we want to create opportunities for people like Phil, then we have to create the best jobs. We actually have a record low youth unemployment. There are more jobs available for young people than we've ever had before. We have to do what it takes to bring down the cost of housing. And that's why we've got one of our most capable ministers, Michael Gove, on the case. And we have to show to young people that having weathered these very difficult storms, having grown better than many other major countries, we have a plan for the future. That's what I'll be talking about on Wednesday. How are we

going to overcome problems so that we can give hope for the future to young people, which is what a conservative government is all about. So Hunt is basically arguing that we can only fix the problem when the economy is in a better position than it is currently. This doesn't really explain why there's a link between housing and generational inequality though, so we're going to try and explain this instead. We'll start by looking into why house prices have gone up so much lately and then look at what this means for the younger generation. Owning a home is one of the biggest investments people will make in their lives and will usually be one of the largest assets an individual owns. Having an expensive asset that only gets more expensive over time is economically preferable to renting, which is why most Britons aspire to owning their own homes. Unfortunately for the younger generation though, this increase in house prices works against them as it simply makes it harder for them to get on the housing ladder. As the graph shows, while housing

has always gone up since the late 1990s. House prices have exploded, and there are a number of reasons for this. In a report on generational inequality that we'll refer to throughout this video, a sociologist at the University of Oxford explained the theory that this was caused almost entirely by low interest rates. In essence, the Bank of England interest rate affects the value of a house. The lower interest rates are, the higher the value of an asset. As the graph shows, when interest rates were lowered significantly in the early 1990s, not long after, we saw the massive boom in property prices. The argument goes that these two events were linked. We should make clear that this is simply a theory, and there are actually certain anomalies that demonstrate that this theory doesn't hold up. For example, despite interest rates not really lowering significantly in the 2010s, property in London exploded again, whereas other regions simply didn't see the same boom. Clearly, something else is going on with these house prices, and perhaps it's just as simple as the fact

that houses aren't being built well. There are actually two sides to this argument, so let's start with the argument in favor. As Full Fact shows, the number of new houses has been steadily decreasing for some time, and as such, the cost has increased. The counter argument to this is that housing surpluses have actually continued to rise since the 1990s, so perhaps it's not that there aren't enough houses, but that these new houses are, for whatever reason, not making it to market at a reasonable price. And as this graph shows, while house prices have increased, private renting rates have remained roughly similar. What this indicates is that there's been an uptick specifically in demand for home ownership. Now, to some extent, this makes sense. While private renting is an alternative to buying property, it's just not a particularly good one. The graph demonstrating the price of renting shows that renting has remained relatively stable, but this is following a huge increase in rents in the preceding decade. In essence, renting has remained stable, but stably at a high cost.

ultimately, rents account for roughly between 30 and 40 percent of household income each year, which is much higher than what a mortgage would be. This percentage of household income spent on renting has been increasing since the 70s. The point is that demand for home ownership has increased, and as such, houses have become a lot more expensive, and a lot more younger people are being forced to rent as a result. Anyway, this is the rather large counter-argument to the assertion that the housing crisis is simply down to a lack of properties being built. This is where the intergenerational inequality argument comes in. In essence, younger people are now spending a huge proportion of their income paying their landlords, who are usually members of the older generation. This is different to older generations who are able to purchase houses and were effectively paying their housing expenditure to themselves. They benefited from acts such as right to buy, which allowed them to purchase property at a hugely discounted rate. In some cases, at discounts of up to 50% in the market rate.

as well as exacerbating the generational divide in British Politics, the housing crisis has also created a divide within the younger generation between what we might call the will Haves and the won't haves. Broadly speaking, the will haves are people who will eventually inherit wealth from their wealthy parents and grandparents, while the won't haves have no equivalent inheritance to look forward to. Because the will haves will eventually inherit their parents' wealth, which is usually tied up in property, the will haves indirectly benefit from this recent increase in house prices. Alternatively, the will haves might benefit from a generous loan from their parents to afford a deposit. This is an increasingly common practice; about half of all first-time buyers now require help from the bank of mum and dad, and this figure is even higher in places like London and the southeast. The point we're making is that while intergenerational inequality is real, bog standard wealth inequality still exists, and in some ways, the conversation about intergenerational inequality obscures quite how bad wealth inequality in the

UK has become all in all. The current generation clearly has a much harder time getting on the property ladder than previous generations. This is compounded by the fact that they have to rent and end up giving away a huge portion in rent to landlords, people who tend to be wealthier members of the older generation, exacerbating both intergenerational and wealth inequality in the UK. So I presume a lot of you watching are probably a similar age to us and will want to keep updated on stories like this. And if so, we've got a great sponsor this week, and that is ground news. Ground news is a website and app that puts all the world media in one place so you can compare how news is being covered by different outlets. This is important because the way we understand a story has a lot to do with how it's being framed, and ground news makes it easy to sort through what's going on by providing bias, factuality, and ownership ratings for each source. For example, with every story I can see the number of sources reporting and whether the

coverage is evenly distributed across the political spectrum according to ratings from independent news monitoring organizations. I can start to identify trends like stories that are mostly covered by one side of the political spectrum. Then I can check how reliable the sources are, as well as who owns them. But one of the coolest things to do is compare headlines to see discrepancies in the language used and the facts prioritized by different media outlets. It really is a fascinating way to read the news and unlike any news app out there. To give it a go, try ground.news/tldr. You can subscribe to get unlimited access to all features and support an independent news platform working to make the media landscape more transparent.

How the Housing Market Screwed Young People

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How the Housing Market Screwed Young People

How the Housing Market Screwed Young People

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