Imagine a central bank, through a series of COVID-era ham-handed policies, undoing more than a hundred years of progress toward working-class and middle-class prosperity.
It’s hard to imagine, but it can happen.
Between the end of the first world war and the turn of the millennium, rates of home ownership climbed rapidly in both Britain and the US, topping out at about 70 per cent as young adults flew the parental nest and set up homes of their own.
But in recent decades, that trend has not only stalled but reversed. In 1980, almost half of 18 to 34-year-olds in Britain and America lived in their own property with children of their own, making this the most common arrangement for young adults. Today that is true of only about one in five, and the most common set-up for 18 to 34-year-olds is now to be living with their parents. . . .
The dream of a family home of one’s own has become just that — a distant dream. . . .
One key reason for the lack of serious attention or action is age, which works in two ways. First, the people most acutely affected by this problem are from an age bracket that still exercises little political clout by voting. Second, few above the age of about 45 — ie virtually all key decision makers — appreciate what it’s like to have this particular key rite of passage postponed, sometimes indefinitely. . . .
