[laurencerowe]

> Nearly everyone has an occupation in a higher paying field than their parents/grandparents and everyone is dual income whereas, I assume, this was less so in the previous generations.

That is unarguably true of our parents' and grandparents' generations, but I don't think it is as true of people of my age or younger (born in early 1980s.)

There was a huge expansion of higher skilled jobs after the war with large numbers of people moving into the middle classes. For me and everyone I know our mothers (born 1950s) worked. We all grew up in dual income families.

My great-grandfather was a miner. His son, my grandfather enlisted in the forces during the war, seems to have been recognised as being technically apt and worked with radar, became an officer and in the early 1960s left to be a manager at an engineering company.

His daughter, my mum, became a teacher (first in family to go to college) and his son did not go to college but became an IT manager (married a teacher). All of us grandchildren went to university but basically have similar jobs to our parents' generation.

Several of my siblings and cousins own houses but they got help from parents or partners' parents and mostly bought outside the south east. Renting a flat in London as a fairly highly paid IT contractor I had to pay six months up front because my parents didn't earn enough to be guarantors.