The Pinch David Willetts

749 Words3 Pages

In his book “The pinch: how the baby boomers took their children’s future - and why they should give it back”, David Willetts made references to various sources whilst highlighting the supposed disparities in economic wellbeing between the baby boom and younger generations. In this essay, I will be assessing whether Willetts has effectively made use of the source “Boreham and Lloyd (2007), ‘Asset Accumulation’, National Centre for Social Research/ International Longevity Centre – UK, table 5.1, p32” in developing his argument that the baby boom cohort were better off financially by having higher mean total net household assets, and whether this source supports his case or not.
Referring to the above named source, Willetts continues his argument …show more content…

This is important, since “Housing is the largest single asset held by UK households” . Hence as a result of this change, it meant that all age groups would have seen a considerable rise in the value of their household assets which would have enabled everyone to feel the ‘wealth effect’. As well as that, it shows that the younger cohort would have seen the fastest increase in the value of their total assets since 1995, allowing them to experience the ‘wealth effect’ significantly more than the other cohorts. Also during this time, it was found that inflation increased “to its highest rate in 17 months” , which could be seen as beneficial since property is a physical asset and hence inflation would not erode the value of this asset but instead individuals would find the value of their homes rising in accordance with inflation. Hence this further reflects on how all age groups would have found an increase the in the value of their mean total net household assets overall, with this being far more substantial for the younger