Should Housing Association tenants have the right to buy?

Recent reports have suggested that the UK government is considering an extension of the Right to Buy to housing association homes. IF Co-Founder Angus Hanton considers how this would affect the UK’s already-skewed housing market, how it would interact with the housing crisis and how it might impact future generations in the UK. The sale… Read more »

Local elections – will you vote?

Many areas of the England, Scotland and Wales will have local elections tomorrow, 5th May. With turnout historically very low, particularly among younger people, Liz Emerson, IF Co-founder, investigates what issues younger generations can influence locally and why voting locally matters. What does your local councillor do? Local councils are responsible for a wide range… Read more »

Wellbeing of Future Generations: How narratives of intergenerational fairness change the debate

The Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill, if passed, will make a significant contribution to the protection of the rights of future generations. The passing of the bill is dependent on several factors, one of which being how intergenerational fairness is framed in debate. IF Student Intern, Hanna Burt, discusses the use of intergenerational fairness as… Read more »

Spring Statement: compounding the cost of living crisis for young people

On March 23, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, delivered his Spring Statement to Parliament, announcing a number of measures intended to alleviate the cost of living crisis. However, IF Co-Founder, Angus Hanton, argues that this package, combined with the government’s longstanding economic and fiscal policies, will do very little to solve the cost of… Read more »

Regressive student finance plans will punish low and middle earners the most

The upcoming changes to the student loan system is yet another stealth tax on young people, which will hit middle-income and low-income graduates the hardest. In the press release, the government argues that these changes will ensure that the problem is not “passed on to future generations”, but the reality is quite the opposite. In… Read more »

Anti-democratic clauses in trade deals are barriers to intergenerational environmental justice

Part of the concept of intergenerational justice is that young people must be able to have a say in policy-making. Democratic systems must allow for their citizens to exert agency over economic and political processes in the first place, otherwise there would be no vehicle for translating the will of (young) people into action and… Read more »

Graduate tax grab by stealth

Graduates have been slapped with an increase to Plan 2 and postgraduate student loan repayments by stealth, which could cost an average earning graduate an additional £110 per year, writes IF volunteer Alana McSkimming Freezing the threshold The Government has announced plans to freeze the student loan repayment threshold. Although this may elicit a sigh… Read more »

Two years of COVID-19: the pandemic, young people and what next?

Almost two years have passed since COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency by the WHO. IF’s digital campaigns officer Liam Hill analyses how the pandemic, the lockdowns and other restrictions have affected young people in the UK, and asks what can be done to address the issues they face. Two years of turmoil It… Read more »

A year in research: our 2021 recap

The end of 2021 marked the 10th anniversary of the founding of IF, a milestone that we marked with a report looking at how the welfare of younger generations has changed over the past decade. IF published three other research reports this year on growing housing inequality, age bias in government spending and the discount… Read more »