Poorer than their parents?

Posted on: August 2nd, 2011
Categories: Financial Advice

Ordinarily, acquiring the attention of a teenager can prove to be a difficult task. However, the opening line of Alvin Hall’s article for the BBC last week nailed it in one.

“Many young people in Britain are set to be in a worse economic position than their parents” – an eye opener for those unaware of current financial strains; a speculation to refute for the determined; or another excuse to smash up central London for the ‘student’ hooligans.

Reflecting on this prophecy, George Lewkowicz, a 25 year old ‘mad about the economy’ City worker, spat: “I’m 100% livid, I think that’s the best way of putting it” and, having painfully swallowed the pill, he predicted that animosity is only likely to escalate: “We’re going to get more angry than we are now. “The riots will happen,” he warned.

“The impacts are going to be huge,” Shiv Malik, author of Jilted Generation, agreed and explained that his friends were delaying children, families and settling down. “They get personally depressed about this stuff… No-one is paying attention to it, and that’s the most upsetting thing.”

On the cusp of the generation divide, former speechwriter for Ed Miliband, James Morris, researched the concern and, perhaps to the surprise of many, found that the older generation not only agree that teenagers are going to have “a much harder time than their parents did” but they are, in fact, more pessimistic about the future than the
youth.

However, Morris explains that “Baby boomers don’t feel like their wealth should be taken away from them and moved to the younger
generation. “They feel the government ought to act to create the right sort of opportunities for younger people to move on.”

Alvin Hall assesses the financial possibilities for the youth of today in a four-part series on BBC Radio 4. Listen to the first two parts
here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012w4h2

Posted By: Keith Robertson

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