Inheritocracy is a provocative and eye-opening analysis of how parental support is the real economic story of the twenty-first century.

This is a recent development but has echoes in the nineteenth century. The modern reality is that for those under forty-five, life chances and opportunities are no longer determined by what you learn or earn but increasingly by whether you have access to the parental ATM.

And there are no signs of the inheritance economy abating. With an estimated £5.5 trillion of family wealth set to be transferred in the UK over the next three decades, today’s millennials, often caught between raising children and looking after parents, are poised to become the richest generation in history. Yet there is a deep and powerful divide emerging between those who can rely on family financial support and those who can’t.

This division gives rise to a taboo. Who among us freely admits to the levels of financial support we receive from parents or even grandparents?

Inheritocracy is a stimulating and original blend of memoir and cultural commentary, told through Eliza Filby’s humorous and insightful voice and enhanced by over thirty interviews with a diverse group of millennials, as well as the views of politicians, economists, authors and experts from David Willetts to Otegha Uwagba. It also features exclusive YouGov polling data on the surprising ways that British families think about money, wealth, class and the most obvious but hidden privilege that defines life in the twenty-first century: inheritance.

Inheritocracy is a fresh and compelling exploration of our recent past and a future that will be shaped – for better or worse – by the largest transference of wealth in human history.

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