So how much did it cost...

ruggedtoast

ash28 wrote: »

Have you read any of his book?

He says that the actions of the baby boomers have so distorted the housing market that young people have far more problems getting on to the housing ladder than boomers did.

He also has the generation of baby boomers spanning 20 years - it didn't - how can you have one generation that includes more years than any other? It distorts the figures - but perhaps that was the intention. And also that there was boom in the birth rate from the end of the WW2 onwards - not true - the was a spike immediately after the war and then it fell off - it picked up again later.

Here is a population pyramid - it's interactive - if you move the slider at the bottom to 2012 and then move your cursor up and down the pyramid it will give you the number of births for that year - you can also clearly see the spike in births after WW2 - it lasted 2 years - you can see the drop off and then the birth rate pick up again - it's quite interesting.

http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc2/EWPyramid.html

In his book -Chapter 4 - Spending the kids inheritance.

Table 1 shows the net housing wealth of different age groups.



Perhaps if he had used the correct years for the baby boomers his "his almost half" would have been a bit different.

To me his research suggests that huge numbers of the under 44s have not been able to buy a house because the baby boomers have them. Patently not true - lots of under 44s have bought houses. And when he published the book in 2010 people of 45 weren't baby boomers and neither were people who were 65 in 2010 - a small point I know - but it just shows how shoddy his research has been.

The way he has arrived at his conclusion is to use net housing values - the price of the house minus the mortgage. I'm a boomer and don't have a mortgage - but I certainly did in my 30s and 40s and well into my 50s. So older people have either no mortgage or a smaller mortgage than the under 44s and therefore have greater housing wealth - quelle surprise. One positive of getting older is that you pay off your mortgage.

But actual home ownership by age is surprising - because on here only the boomers can afford property.

The under 44's have 35% of owned property, the 45s to 64 have 40% and the over 65s have 26%. So younger people have pretty hefty share too.

You need to look at table S138 in the link below - from Dept for Communities and Local Government.

http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/housingresearch/housingsurveys/surveyofenglishhousing/sehlivetables/owneroccupiersincluding/

A) Of course not. I'm not reading a book by David Willetts.
That is a cogent and reasoned argument. I will look at your links later.