There’s a solution to rising homeownership inequality – a lifetime gift tax

There is nothing insurmountable about the challenge of designing a new system for tackling the kind of intergenerational asset transfers we’re increasingly seeing

Unlike the current inheritance tax, a gift tax would capture the financial helping hand given to children to buy homes (PA)

In the 1960s the sociologist Robert Merton identified something he described as the “Matthew effect”.

Merton was drawing on the observation by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew that, “for whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance”.

In other words, there’s a natural tendency for the rich to get richer.