Any young Britons believe that the housing market is stacked against them. And who can blame them? In the past two decades, house prices have double in real terms, because of both tight planning restrictions, which have limited the supply of homes, and low interest rates, which have stoked demand for them.

Theresa May, the prime minister, has described the scarcity of housing as "the biggest domestic policy challenge of our generation". But the reality is that it challenges some generations more than others. Elderly folk, who bought their houses before the boom, own a huge slice of overall housing wealth relative to their share of the popular. It is different story for youngsters. A 27-year-old living today is half as likely to be a home-owner as one living 15 year ago.

Yet some economists spy a silver lining for millennials. The thinking goes that, within a decade or two, baby-boomers-the large generation born between roughly the early 1940s and early 1960s-will begin to sell up, as they first start to downsize, then move into elderly people's accommodation and, eventually, to the great old-folks' home in the sky.

However, so far the British boomers are in no rush to scale down. In contrast to America, Britain does not have much of a downsizing culture. By one calculation just 40% of Britons who owned their homes at age 50 will move house before they die. A paper published in 2011 provides convincing evidence that geography and climate play a big role. In america oldsters can move to sunny climes like Florida. Britain is a bit short on such places-Cornwall, lovely as it is, is not known as the "Sunshine County"-so most pensioners don't bother.

Besides, the impact of the great baby-boomer sell-off will have an unequal effect on different groups of youngster. The boomers will leave record amounts of wealth to their descendants. however, nearly half of non-home owning millennials have no parental property wealth at all, according to a research. The other half will be able to use their inheritance to gain greater purchase in the housing market, for themselves or their own heirs and heiresses. A class of wealthy oldsters is moving on, only to be replaced by a class of wealthy inheritors.