IF supporter Daniel Harrison, economist, and author of Intergenerational Theft calls out the false media narrative against young people – and instead calls for Government to address the real issue – the breaking of the intergenerational contract which is blighting the lives of young people.
Ageism down the generations
You have probably seen the recent media onslaught against the young, falsely portraying Gen Z in particular as lazy, “workshy”, social media obsessed snowflakes that lack resilience, only doing “lazy girl jobs” or even “quiet quitting”/ “revenge quitting”.
However, this rhetoric is designed to blame the young individual rather than address systemic failure: i.e. the deliberate and cynical policy choices made by successive governments since the 1950’s onwards to overtly favour the economic interests of the larger baby boomer generation at the expense of other younger people. After all, it’s much easier to demonise the young than admit to intentionally shattering the intergenerational contract.
What is the intergenerational contract?
Put simply, this implicit unwritten contract understands that there are fundamentally three stages of life:
- When you are a child, the state pays for your education and healthcare (so you are a net beneficiary)
- When you are working age, you pay taxes (where you are a net contributor paying to support both children, pensioners and all other government spending)
- When you are a pensioner, you receive a pension and healthcare (so you are a net beneficiary)
The welfare state as we know it only functions through the symbiotic relationship of these three age groups. If you don’t believe in the intergenerational contact, I can prove it very simply. If I emigrate, become ill, or choose to stop working and don’t pay my taxes – children and pensioners would starve and die. Government and society would collapse within days. Case proven.
Fundamentally, over your lifetime, those 3 stages of life should result in what you pay in and what you receive should balance out. If it doesn’t…well there’s a problem… and that’s exactly what has happened as the government has accumulated £2.7 trillion of national debt and £6.4 trillion of largely “unfunded” state pension and public sector pension liabilities which future generations will be forced to pay for through higher taxes. The average baby boomer has not paid enough taxes and will take out far too much, primarily in pensions and healthcare, to the tune of £7.6 trillion or £220,000 per person.
The young are no longer happy
But what’s really interesting about the intergenerational contract is that this has historically followed the traditional ‘U’ shaped curve of happiness, whereby people are happier when younger, less happy when they are working, with happiness rising again when they retire. However, from around 2013, this appears to have changed.
Research studying wellbeing across multiple countries by the US National Bureau of Economic Research and commissioned by the UN has highlighted that “youth is no longer one of the happiest times of life.” and stated that “the u-shape in wellbeing by age that used to exist in these countries is now gone, replaced by a crisis in wellbeing among the young.”
Acute mental ill-health
And this has been confirmed by other studies from eminent academic research as published by The Lancet Psychiatry Commission stating that “intergenerational inequality, unregulated social media, wage theft, insecure employment and the climate crisis are driving a “dangerous” and “alarming” global surge in mental ill health among youth, a consortium of health experts has warned.”
The research led by the Patrick McGorry, the Executive Director of Australia’s Orygen Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, who is a Psychiatrist and Professor of Youth Mental Health, asserted that “it may appear on the surface that previous generations had it more difficult, given the Great Depression, world wars and nuclear threats.”, “But actually, there’s much less security and hope for the future surrounding the current generation than ever before. The challenges today’s generation of young people face are unprecedented, they’re devastating, and they’re worse than they’ve ever been.”
Furthermore, a child and youth psychiatrist Dr Paul Denborough, a Clinical Director of Headspace in Australia described the Lancet paper as “spot on, in that a society where there’s greater inequality and marginalisation is very destructive. The policies of governments are really not favouring young people. Young people are aware of intergenerational unfairness in policies – they are saying; ‘You older people don’t give a shit about us.”
Denborough added that merely labelling and treating young people for mental health problems does not address the underlying root cause, stating “the inequality, the lack of affordable housing, the insecure employment and the policies that drive those are often the root cause. If society is not running that intergenerational fairness lens over what they’re doing and addressing the causes, then you’re just band-aiding the problem.”
The research data also highlights something quite disturbing that “under-45s in the UK are experiencing significantly more despair than 10 years ago.”
The unprecedented challenges facing young people
Fundamentally, extreme intergenerational inequality has created a society where work simply does not pay for young people anymore.
Our fundamentally undemocratic society has resulted in a distorted ‘Gerontocracy’ which is fundamentally designed to pander to the interests of the ageing population – primarily the homeowning baby boomer generation, because there are 3 million more of them and they vote more, with little regard for the young who tend to vote less.
Education, academic pressure & mental health
- A report from University College London (UCL) found that “Adolescents are increasingly feeling pressure from schools, parents, or themselves to achieve higher grades, and there are concerns extensive testing and exams are causing undue stress.”
- Young students are facing average graduate student debt of £45,600.
Jobs
- Getting a well-paid job often requires 100’s of applications, plus a 3 or 4 stage interviews.
Housing
- Average lifetime housing costs for young people are three times higher relative to incomes than they were for baby boomers.
- Rents have reached record levels with London rents reaching £2,114 in 2024, and £1,319 across England.
- Buying: The average first time buyer (FTB) age is now 35 in London, (and 33 for the rest of England) due to house price multiples (at the national level) increasing from ~4.5x from 1945-2000 for older generations to now being 8x the average salary. This is arguably the most tangible generational injustice, forcing most young people to become dual income couples.
- However, if you get on the housing ladder later, to make the mortgage affordable, 57% of first-time buyers take on a mortgage of 30+ years, meaning you will be paying off your mortgage until your retirement at ~70 years old.
Children and natures cut-off point
- Unlike for baby boomers, because housing now invariably requires a dual income couple, that inevitably means paying for childcare. However, the UK has the third highest childcare costs in the world taking up to 75% of take home pay. Unsurprisingly, the UK fertility rate has fallen to its lowest on record at 1.44. In modern parlance, young people have become ‘financially infertile’.
Oh, and no pressure, but don’t forget to get on the housing ladder and have children all before ~40 years old, or conceiving a child or getting a 30+ year mortgage becomes drastically more difficult.
Taxation and a broken social contract
Even if a young person succeeds at passing all those hurdles, the reality dawns on them that they are paying record levels of taxation (effectively double per household within a dual income couple), but why work when it gets you a low quality of life, and fundamentally, an increasing proportion of your taxes are subsidising the under taxation, debts and liabilities of the older generation?
In that context, is it any wonder that young people are exasperated, disillusioned with employment, become a NEET, and suffer from mental health problems?
We have set young people up to fail
These unprecedented challenges have made it impossible for young people to thrive and progress through life’s natural milestones. But that’s not all – it also puts enormous strain upon relationships and family life – which ironically, are precisely one of the key support mechanisms we are told is important to help with resilience and mental health challenges.
It is clear that happiness is a sense of ‘agency’ and hope that, even if things are tough now, if you strive, work hard, you can change your circumstances and progress.
Conversely, unhappiness is the sense of powerlessness at your circumstances – and young people are very much experiencing the latter in the UK: stuck in the family home; part of ‘Generation Rent’; and becoming financially infertile.
Any reasonable person would be demotivated by an economic system which is so blatantly rigged economic against the young.
IF is not alone
And don’t just take our word for it. Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph recently admitted that “we’re blaming Gen Z for worklessness when the real problem is an economy that offers them nothing but debt and despair.”
Sadiq Khan also recently made a similar point about the housing crisis “it’s creating intergenerational inequality like we’ve never seen before. It’s shattering one of the bedrock principles Britain was built on: that if you work hard, you get ahead.”, essentially admitting that intergenerational inequality has broken the social contract.
No wonder young people have lost faith in our so-called ‘democracy’.
Avoidance is the name of the game
Which brings me full circle to why the government is choosing to portray the young, the workless and the disabled as the ‘problem’.
- Firstly, as is often the case, government policy is cynically designed to divert attention away from much larger problems it does not want to address – i.e. intergenerational inequality and wealth inequality that is holding our economy back.
- Targeting the young and disabled on working age benefits is easier than tackling pensioner benefits – exemplified by the frankly hysterical response when Labour introduced means testing for pensioner’s winter fuel payments, despite the ‘triple-lock’ making Britain’s pensioners the age group least likely to be in poverty, with children the most likely.
- It avoids having to tax the wealthy. The government’s benefit cuts announced on 17th March 2025, are reported to save just £5 billion a year. A negligible amount, when this is just 0.4% of ~£1,200 billion annual government spending. By aligning CGT with income tax, or modest wealth taxes you could easily raise £5 billion in extra revenue.
- It helps prop up the Ponzi scheme. Remember that the government has no money. The baby boomers have bankrupted us, evidenced by the fact we have a £2.7 Trillion national debt primarily due to under taxation and over indulgence of the older generation. Young people did not create this debt. As the ageing pensioner population strains public finances, to maintain the ‘dependency ratio’, government wants as many working-age people in work to keep propping up the Ponzi scheme from collapse.
Call to action
Government should not be making cuts to vulnerable young and disabled people, but should instead target the real moral injustice – the clear evidence indicating it is actually the baby boomers who have not paid their way.
We must therefore keep campaigning for intergenerational fairness for younger generations.
A 10-point policy plan:
- Implement a large housebuilding programmeto increase supply and reduce house prices/rents
- Launch a thorough review of the current state pension system
- Align income tax on earned income with capital gains tax on unearned income
- Review student fees and maintenance loans
- Introduce a modest wealth taxonly on the very wealthiest 1% of individuals
- Introduce a consumption tax e.g. airline carbon tax which hits the wealthiest the most
- Lower the voting age to 16 alongside Scotland’s implementation in 2016
- Support the Wellbeing of Future Generations Actin England and follow Scotland’s and Wales’ example
- Measure the journey towards long-term thinking and investment with intergenerational impact assessments
- And let’s have a cabinet minister for intergenerational fairness