Topic coverage
This theme includes topics such as economic activity, income, wealth, savings, debts, benefits, assets and housing, future plans, job satisfaction, job security, working conditions, autonomy measures, educational attainment, intergenerational social and income mobility, housing tenure, living conditions and housing aspirations.
Key priorities and considerations
It will be crucial to collect information on the labour market experiences of this generation, as they move through their working lives during a period when the’ gig economy’ is growing, when automation and artificial intelligence are changing the nature of work, and the economic and political environment may lead to more instability and insecurity in employment. Issues such as labour market demand and working conditions will be of great importance, so too will pervasive issues of discrimination. How should we measure these experiences?
At this life stage the Next Steps cohort will be moving towards more stable employment, in order to explain what predicts high/low status we will consider the measurement of economic activity histories, productivity, job satisfaction, income, job security and autonomy measures. Moreover we will be well placed to measure intergenerational social and income mobility. Capturing these measures will document the changing labour market including levels of insecurity of employment, participation in the gig economy and trends towards automation, and provide evidence about their impact on the lives of this generation. We welcome your thoughts on measures to include.
It may also be important to include measures of labour supply, including the skills of a generation, human capital accumulation, education, training and career progression and planning. We invite you to give feedback on the types of skills, training and qualifications we should try to measure.
For this generation – often dubbed ‘Generation Rent’ – finding affordable and high quality housing is a growing challenge, particularly in some geographical areas, with concerns around housing costs and supply, as well as insecurity of tenure and poor quality in the rental sector, particularly for younger generations featuring prominently in social and political debate. It will be important to understand their attitudes to housing, current situation and aspirations including deposits, savings, endowments; housing histories (retrospective housing transitions, when first moved out of family home, renting, sharing, first bought a home etc.). Moreover we can capture aspects of wealth accumulation, including savings, anticipating inheritance and pension contributions.