The prospects of the UK’s young people have “nosedived” in the years following the 2007 financial crisis, a new report measuring how government policies affect the younger generation has found.
From the Intergenerational Foundation (IF), the first ever Intergenerational Fairness Index suggests that factors such as a lack of inclusion in the workplace and the rising cost of housing and pensions mean that young people are now significantly worse off relative to the rest of the population than
Based on government statistics, the index measures the prospects of young people between 1990 and 2010 across nine indicators – unemployment, housing, pensions, government, debt, participation in democracy, health, income, the environment and education.
Using a base score of 100 in the year 2000, the index shows that ‘unfairness’ for young people has increased from a score of 84 in 1990 to 128 in 2010.
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But recent years have seen a particularly dramatic fall in the prospects of young people, largely as a result of the economic crisis that started in 2007, says IF.
In the years up to 2008, the index’s unfairness score rose by an average annual rate of two points- but this has surged to between six and seven points over the past two years.
Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston MIT and the creator of intergenerational accounting for the World Bank in the 1990s, said the index shows that the UK is “failing its young”.
“The UK, like other developed economies, has engaged in fiscal, educational, health and environmental child abuse,” he added.
IF is now calling on the government to take action to bring the index back down to pre-2008 levels in order to create a greater balance of fairness between the younger and older generations.
Angus Hanton, co-founder of IF and one of the authors of the index, added: “The index shows that poorer young people are financing richer old people as our society grapples with demographic change and increasing longevity.”
