High house prices and weak wage growth have led to a stark fall in home ownership rates among young people since the early 2000s, with a typical first-time buyer needing 18 years to save for a deposit, up from 3 years in the mid-90s. Increasingly stepping into this gap has been the Bank of Mum and Dad. How strong is the link now between parental wealth and their children’s home ownership prospects, and how has it changed over time? How are banks responding to this changing world? What are the wider implications of young people’s prospects being determined by the wealth of their parents and what can we do to address this? At an event at its Westminster headquarters, the Resolution Foundation presented the key findings from new research on the direct link between parental wealth and their children’s housing prospects. A panel of experts then discussed what this means for social mobility, for the housing market and how politics should respond to it, before taking part in an audience Q&A. Speakers Neil O’Brien – MP for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston Sue Hayes, Group Managing Director – Retail Finance at Aldermore Bank Steve Machin, Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE Stephen Clarke, Senior Economic Analyst at the Resolution Foundation David Willetts, Executive Chair of the Resolution Foundation (chair)
