Blowing the budget: Why the young have to spend more than the old on essentials
This report investigates spending power across the generations and finds that under-30s’ households:
- Have to dedicate the higher proportion of their total weekly expenditure to essentials
- Essential items take up 70% of their budget – a 16% increase compared to 2002/3
- The bottom quintile of under-30s have on average have to dedicate 77% of their weekly expenditure on essential spending
- Discretionary spending by under-30s has collapsed compared to 2002/3:
- Under-30s spend £147/week less on non-essentials (£7,640 a year)
- 30-49 year-olds spend £160/week less on non-essentials (£8,420 a year)
- Over-65s have INCREASED average discretionary spending by £28/week
On intergenerational fairness grounds the nono-party-political Intergenerational Foundation calls on the new government to:
- Acknowledge the distinct challenges facing young people
- Pay benefits according to need rather than age alone
- Make the National Living Wage available to all adults
- Reduce the tax-take from younger generations by aligning the taxation of earned and unearned income
- Rapidly increase housing supply and genuinely affordable social housing stocks for young people
- Tie Universal Credit to the cost of a basket of essential goods