The pandemic has aggravated intergenerational inequality, and a citizen’s inheritance could help tackle this. Picture: BLOOMBERG
I thought of the CTFs, and similar capital endowment plans such as “baby bonds” as they’re known in the US, when a proposal urging financial compensation for young people went viral shortly before Christmas. The idea was they should be repaid for isolating to protect older people during the pandemic.
However, a direct financial handout to “Gen C” for their pandemic woes would set age above other societal inequities that Covid-19 amplified. It would also risk fraying generational ties even further by framing social obligations as purely transactional. Wealth disparities could yet get worse: the massive cost of pandemic support measures may lead to tax increases that fall heavily on working-age people, as we’ve already seen in the UK.
An endowment at birth would compound in value over time, and to ensure today’s teenagers and twenty-something’s don’t lose out, governments could make immediate capital grants to young adults. A £10,000 “citizen’s inheritance” for each British 25-year-old would cost about £7bn yearly and at least double the wealth of more than 60% of young adults, the Resolution Foundation has estimated.
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