The UK’s Generational Wealth Gap - Mike Brewer

Feb 28, 2025

Mike Brewer, Interim Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation and Visiting Professor at LSE, dives into the UK's growing generational wealth gap. He discusses how household wealth has nearly doubled due to soaring house prices, but young people struggle with homeownership. Income stagnation since the mid-2000s has hit younger cohorts particularly hard. Brewer also explores recent shifts in generational wealth dynamics, suggesting that millennials are starting to improve their economic standing while proposing solutions for addressing systemic disparities in wealth distribution.

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Intro

00:00 • 11min

Exploring Income and Wealth Inequality in the UK

11:13 • 29min

Shifting Trends in Generational Wealth and Home Ownership

40:03 • 2min

Navigating Wealth Distribution and Generational Equity in the UK

42:29 • 8min

The UK's income inequality has remained stable since the 1990s, but household wealth has nearly doubled, mainly driven by soaring house prices. This has widened the wealth gap between generations, with younger people less likely to own homes. Furthermore, weak income growth since the mid-2000s has disproportionately affected younger cohorts. This lecture unpacks these economic trends to reveal how they have created tensions between generations by exacerbating disparities in their respective living standards.

This lecture was recorded by Mike Brewer on 18th February 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Mike is Interim Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Department of Social Policy at the LSE. Between 2011 and 2020, he was a Professor of Economics at the University of Essex. He has also worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and HM Treasury.

Mike is interested in all aspects of inequality in income and wealth, including the role of the labour market and the tax and benefit system. He also has a long background in using microsimulation methods. He is the author of a book, What Do We Know And What Should We Do About Inequality?, published by SAGE in 2019.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/uks-generational-wealth-gap

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