ABSTRACT
Accumulated wealth can be used in various ways to bolster the income and other resources of subsequent generations. The title of a book by David Willetts holds the generation that bought houses between the 1960s and the 1990s as somehow responsible for unequal treatment of later generations. With education, the most publicly displayed inter-generational discontent about unequal treatment was generated by much increased university tuition fees, as well as the accompanying high rate of interest payable on student loans. The principal thrust of the policy, though, was to eliminate the building of public housing, and this is the real origin of the present discontent about housing. The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act had made provision for local authorities to create “green belts” around towns, and in 1955 the then Conservative housing minister adopted a policy of encouraging them to do so.
