The social mobility of home ownership : to what extent have the millennials fared worse?

This paper considers home ownership rates for different generational cohorts in the UK, and how they are related to family background, as measured by parental occupation status. The results show home ownership rates have fallen across recent generational cohorts, even when they are compared at the same stage in their lives. Concurrent with this fall, there has been an increasing importance of family background in determining whether an individual owns their own home. While such an effect has always been present for individuals who do not reach the higher levels of education or occupation hierarchies, this is a newer phenomenon for successful graduates in professional/managerial occupations, for whom home ownership is also now strongly related to family background amongst the Millennial cohort.