“The worst thing about our gerontocracy is its short-sightedness. A society that denies its young economic independence, home ownership, the possibility of marriage and children, is in decadent decline.”
Janice Turner, Journalist at The Times
In the midst of exam results season, I was about to prepare this Thought for the Week on a theme of guidance, reaction and originality as the three sources of inspiration for each new generation. That was until I read Janice Turner's article in Saturdays’ The Times’ , entitled ‘Now the young are priced out of marriage’.
This article is not, however, just about marriage — or, rather, the lack of it (in 2021, 51.3% of babies in England and Wales were born out of wedlock: for those who think this was a pandemic blip, it’s hovered between 47% and 48% for the past decade). The article’s subtitle points to a deeper malaise: that our society is denying a whole generation from low income backgrounds the opportunity to find adult stability and economic security of their own.
She draws attention particularly to the combination of the high rate of unmarried partnership disintegration (53%) by the time children are just five years old, together with the fact that wedlock has become the domain of the wealthy. This combination makes it graphically clear why so many young people end up in the care system, and why it's so important to help them to achieve their potential in adult life notwithstanding such a chaotic start.
The ‘decadent decline’ of which Janice Turner writes is only reversible if we address the ‘motivation duration’ challenge of which we spoke last week. This Generational Disconnect is one of those long-term challenges which has persistently been eclipsed by short-term crises over the past twenty years.
Undoubtedly our form of democracy must carry a large part of responsibility for this. Not only is the electoral horizon far too short for tackling major strategic problems, but the most active segment of the electorate is old: thus politicians feel the need to pander to what they perceive as their priorities, such as a health system which is not progressively funded by insurance and the granting of universal benefits such as winter fuel payments and bus passes to people who are well able to pay for their own.
The ‘Punch and Judy’ show which is currently running into its last stages shows little sign of tackling this generational disconnect, but perhaps that's because the electorate for the leadership shares its characteristics with the wider most active segment of voters – i.e. the elderly. But whoever wins — and at present that looks almost certainly to be Liz Truss — a thorough re-assessment of how to get out of this decadent decline will be necessary.
This will require an endorsement of inter-generational rebalancing, using the concepts we are developing and submitting to rigorous academic evaluation through the Cambridge SHARE project. It will only be possible to break the cycle of deprivation, which has now become so much worse than when Sir Keith Joseph coined the phrase nearly fifty years ago, if HM Treasury breaks with its mantra of refusing to countenance the hypothecation of Inheritance Tax (i.e. committing its proceeds to empowering young people from disadvantaged backgrounds)..
We also need to look closely at how to encourage stability of relationships which give birth to children, both in and out of marriage. Janice Turner draws attention to the 83% or parents who are married in the wealthiest quintile, compared with 55% in poorest; and that, whereas just 15% of married parents split by the time a child is five years old, this rises to 53% for unmarried parents. This means that children from the poorest homes are 50% more likely to have split parents by their fifth birthday.
Parental stability, whether in or out of marriage, is critical to a young person’s sense of security and stability. We must find new ways to prioritise the interest of children: not only in divorce proceedings but also where children are born out of wedlock.
Because of the massive childhood instability that is imposed on the children of broken partnerships among low income families, we urgently need to look at the psychological challenges confronting so many young people. We will have to discover what are the best ways of building a pathway from despair into a situation of hope and opportunity. From an economic perspective, this is likely to involve a better appreciation of incentivised learning, where confidence can be gradually built while a new way forward is earned.
The trilogy on which I was originally going to base this Thought for the Week was guidance, reaction and originality — guidance that the older generation should be providing; reactions of the younger generation to things that they have observed as inappropriate; and originality, because each human is blessed with the amazing gift of creativity which enables them to work out new things for themselves.
However, the inter-generational chaos that Janice Turner describes hardly allows for guidance and reaction if parental influence is no longer present. This generational disconnect, placing a great barrier of instability between the young and the middle-aged (let alone the old), removes the scope for this type of learning, particularly for the poor. We are left with originality, and much of that is now substituted by digital experience and social media.
So I hope Liz Truss will have seen this article in The Times and, even if she does not acknowledge the challenge in her remaining hustings, that she will focus on the long-term challenge it describes. We cannot give up on the young — they are the future. They need to be able to look forward to the same individual economic freedom and maturity as young adults that many of us have enjoyed, while they have the energy and determination to achieve their potential.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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