Intergenerational Centre

An intergenerational audit for the UK

2024

21 November 2024

Molly Broome

Sophie Hale

Hannah Slaughter

Along the journey from cradle to grave, all sorts of things – including meaning, nurturing and understanding – flow between the generations. But there are also important and much more quantifiable flows – of time, money and other material resources – between the adult cohorts.

The sixth Intergenerational Audit for the UK, produced as part of the ESRC-funded Connecting Generations research programme, evaluates the economic importance of these intergenerational exchanges. Taking a more targeted approach than previous audits, this year’s report examines the critical support older generations offer to younger ones, including housing assistance, childcare, and financial aid such as gifts and inheritances. It also sheds light on the unpaid care responsibilities that younger and middle-aged adults frequently provide, particularly for ageing parents.

Key findings

The proportion of younger adults (under-35s) living with their parents has risen from one-in-four (26 per cent) at the turn of the century to nearly two-in-five (39 per cent) in 2021-2022.
15 per cent of under-35s living with their parents are unemployed (against 5 per cent for other under-35s), and 33 per cent of those in work are low paid (against 16 per cent for others). This raises concerns that young people who live at home may become ‘trapped’ in areas with limited opportunities.
However, our analysis suggests otherwise. While the ‘live-at-homers’ start out as a relatively disadvantaged group, there tend to catch up over time. After five years, young adults who began by living at home are just as likely to be employed as their peers, and no more likely to be low paid.
Mothers are working more than in the past – especially those with young children. In 1992, only four-in-ten mums with a child under five worked; by 2022 it was seven-in-ten.
But motherhood still routinely disrupts careers. The proportion of mothers of under-fives whose employment status is shaped by having children (whether through economic inactivity or part-time working due to family commitments or simply being on parental leave) is around 30 per cent. For fathers, the comparable proportion is 3 per cent.
While formal childcare has expanded to meet the childcare gap created by more mothers moving into work, grandparents also play a crucial role. In total, grandparents provided an estimated 766 million hours of childcare to their grandchildren in 2022-23. If this support had replaced nursery care, its value would amount to approximately £3.5 billion.
Support flows up the generations as well, particularly in the context of rising demand for adult care in an ageing UK. Yet, resources haven’t expanded to meet growing need: age-adjusted local authority spending on adult social care was 7 per cent lower in 2022-23 than in 2009-10, while residential care costs have surged 30 per cent in real terms over the past nine years.
Informal care, often provided by relatives, is filling the gap. While middle-aged adults still provide the most care for adults overall, younger adults are also stepping up: millennials are 30 per cent more likely to provide at least five hours of care a week than previous generations did at similar ages.
Care intensity is rising: the share of carers providing over 20 hours a week nearly doubled from 15 per cent in 1991 to 28 per cent in 2021-22. This can limit labour market participation, with carers facing a 70 per cent higher likelihood of leaving employment if their responsibilities intensify.
Our final intergenerational flow – inheritances – has become increasingly significant. Across the 2010s, the number of adults receiving an inheritance over a two-year period rose from 1.7 million in 2008-10 to 2.1 million in 2018-20.
Recipients of inheritances are often in their 50s and 60s, and this can have significant implications for labour market decisions. Among the non-retired over-50s, those who received an inheritance of £50,000 or more were 4 percentage points more likely to retire early than those who did not receive an inheritance. This suggests that more frequent large inheritances may act as a headwind against high employment.

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