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Bank of Mum and Dad: why we all now live in an 'inheritocracy'

Family wealth dictates our life choices. So is the Bank of Mum and Dad now behind so many of society’s growing inequalities?

I grew up in a working-class household and was the first person in my family to get a degree, but it was the fact my parents had scrimped in the 1980s to purchase properties in London (and allowed me to crash in one throughout my 20s) that has arguably been the true source of opportunities in my life. One academic investigation into the Bank of Mum and Dad found that its beneficiaries tend to frame this considerable financial support not in terms of their own individual privilege, but as evidence of their parents’ hard work and upward mobility. My own childhood and messy class identity was my starting point, but the more people I spoke to, the more I realised not just how unfair this lottery of birth is, but how bad we all are at talking about it, within our friendship groups, families, society, even to ourselves.

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