What this chart shows

↑ The takeaway

At age 30, Boomers had £68,000. Millennials at 30 had £27,000. That's not a lifestyle choice — it's a structural shift in who gets to build wealth and when.

Median total household wealth at equivalent age milestones (30, 40, 50, 60) for three generations: Baby Boomers (born 1946–64), Generation X (born 1965–80), and Millennials (born 1981–96). All values are adjusted to 2022 real terms so that generational comparisons are like-for-like. Faded bars indicate projected or estimated values where that generation has not yet reached the milestone.

The pattern is consistent: each younger generation arrives at each age milestone with significantly less wealth than the generation before. At age 30, the decline from Boomers to Millennials is 60%. At age 40, Gen X had 27% less than Boomers. This is not simply a "they'll catch up" story — the gap reflects structural differences in housing costs, pension access, wage growth, and student debt that compound over a lifetime.

Why it matters

Wealth at key life stages determines access to home ownership, financial security, and retirement adequacy. If Millennials and Gen Z cannot accumulate wealth at the same rate as their parents did, the UK faces a future where prosperity depends almost entirely on inheritance rather than work. This makes inter-generational mobility impossible without structural policy change — and makes the distribution of inherited wealth a defining political question of the coming decades.

Methodology & data quality
Wealth figures are compiled from the Resolution Foundation's "Intergenerational Audit for the UK" (2024) and the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS), waves 1–8 (2006–2024). Measure: Median total household wealth (financial + physical + property + private pension, net of debts). Age milestones: 30, 40, 50, 60 — chosen to enable like-for-like generational comparison. Adjustment: All values in 2022 real terms (deflated by CPI/CPIH to remove inflation effects). Projected values: Where a generation has not yet reached a milestone (e.g. Millennials at 40), values are projected from current wealth trajectories and are clearly marked. Known caveats: the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey, which provides the underlying wealth figures, lost accredited official statistics status in June 2025 (declining response rates, OSR Report 396), so its figures are no longer National Statistics. "Household" wealth divides differently for different living arrangements (single vs. couple). Pension wealth is included but valued differently across defined-benefit (Boomers) and defined-contribution (younger) schemes. The WAS sample begins in 2006, so Boomer wealth at age 30 (circa 1994) is estimated from other sources. Inheritance received is included in current wealth but not separately tracked.