An intergenerational audit for the UK 2024
New research published today by the Resolution Foundation, funded by the ESRC Connecting Generations research programme, has found that increasing transfers between generations have a profound, but unequally felt, impact on people’s economic prospects.
This sixth Intergenerational Audit for the UK examines how the support that families give and receive throughout adulthood has changed over recent decades, and what this means for peoples’ economic prospects.
🚨New research🚨
— Resolution Foundation (@resfoundation) November 21, 2024
In the sixth Intergenerational Audit for the UK we've quantified the intergenerational transfers that make up the cat's cradle of support people are giving and receiving.
Get the full analysis➡️ https://t.co/O4awDEyTKC pic.twitter.com/8oX3nxipAh
Key Findings
• Young adults are increasingly reliant on their parents for housing support. Since the turn of the century, the number of people aged 18-34 who still live with their parents has risen from one-in-four (26%) to nearly two-in-five (39%) in 2021 – 2022.
• While boomerang children are three times more likely to be unemployed than those living independently (which may explain why they live at home in the first place), they are no less likely to change jobs and do not suffer any medium-term disadvantage. In fact, living at home with parents in London is associated with better job outcomes.
• Parents also play an increasing role in helping young people get onto the housing ladder. The total value of financial gifts has more than doubled over the past decade to reach a record £29 billion over the two years 2018-20. Over one-in-three recent first-time buyers say they received help from friends or family.
• Seven-in-ten mums are now in paid work, up from just four-in-ten in the early 1990s. Formal childcare has expanded to meet the childcare gap created by this change, but grandparents play a crucial role in providing childcare to their grandchildren. In total, grandparents provided an estimated 766 million hours of childcare to their grandchildren in 2022-23 - equivalent to £3.5 billion in terms of the cost of nursery care.
• The share of people caring for an adult relative for at least five hours a week has increased from 6% in the early 1990s to 9% by 2021-22. Middle-aged adults still provide most care for adults overall, however, younger adults are also stepping up: millennials are 30% more likely to provide at least five hours of care a week than previous generations did at similar ages. This has important impacts for the workplace; a working-age person is 37% more likely to leave employment when they become a carer compared to those without adult caring responsibilities.
• Inheritances, which have more than doubled over the past decade (from £83 billion in 2008-10 to £189 billion in 2018-20), are being used by people to pay off their mortgage or to retire early.
• Unequal distribution of intergenerational transfer of cash and care raises huge challenges for families and wider society. Wealthy families are seven times more likely to give financial gifts than the least wealthy families, and twice as likely to leave an inheritance, leaving those without wealthy parents at a greater economic disadvantage.
Molly Broome, Connecting Generations member and Economist at the Resolution Foundation said: “As Britain gets older and wealthier, transfers between generations are playing a greater role in shaping peoples’ economic prospects. Families today play a bigger role in helping young people onto the housing ladder, helping older workers off the jobs ladder and into retirement, and supporting relatives when they’re ill.
“These family transfers are hugely important and can be very rewarding. But they are not shared equally across society. Those who aren’t lucky enough to have wealthy parents often struggle to secure a home of their own or enjoy early retirement.
“In recent decades, expanded childcare provision has boosted parental employment. But the same expansion has not been seen for adult social care, which has limited employment opportunities for caregivers. Looking ahead, policymakers should ensure that adult care is valued as highly as childcare.”
Read the full report ‘An intergenerational audit for the UK: 2024’ by Molly Broome, Sophie Hale and Hannah Slaughter.
Watch the launch ‘Many helping hands: How intergenerational transfers support lifetime living standards’.
This work was supported by ESRC grant number ES/W002116/1 Connecting Generations led by Professor Jane Falkingham CBE at the University of Southampton. Connecting Generations aims to understand intergenerational connectivity, producing novel science that informs policy debate.
Further Reading
Trends in informal caregiving in Great Britain from 1985-2020, (Centre for Population Change and Connecting Generations Working Paper 111)
Personal planning for future long-term care among mid-age and old adults in England: The role of expectations (Centre for Population Change and Connecting Generations Working Paper 110)
Understanding Intergenerational Co-residence in the UK: New insights from the UK Generations and Gender Survey (Centre for Population Change and Connecting Generations Working Paper 108)
Do flexible hours and working from home allow parents to more equally share childcare tasks? (Centre for Population Change and Connecting Generations Working Paper 107)
Lone Parents: The invisible “Sandwich Generation" (Centre for Population Change and Connecting Generations Policy Brief 79)
Social care provision in Great Britain: Exploring gender, cohort, and life stage differences (Centre for Population Change and Connecting Generations Policy Brief 78)
Changes in kinship: Implications for the availability of kin to care Centre for Population Change and Connecting Generations Policy Brief 74)
The dynamics of social care and employment in mid-life (Ageing & Society)
Delivering ‘50 PLUS Choices’ in the UK: How compatible are ‘fuller working lives’ with an increasing reliance on informal carers to deliver social care? (Journal of Social Policy)
The changing living arrangements of young adults in the UK (Population Trends)
Posted 21/11/2024 10:46
Back
