I'm a little surprised by this. While I'm better off than my parents I went into a much more highly paying field (software engineer vs teacher/social worker.) If I did a similar job to them I would have no hope of ever affording a similar house to them.
They were part of a generation that benefited from enormous house price appreciation due to a combination of falling interest rates went from almost 15% down to under 5% (this is about 3x on its own) and the fall in house building which drove up prices and rents generally.
This effect is somewhat less pronounced outside of southern England.
You make a good point about higher paying fields in the younger generations. While there is a spread of occupations that I replied to another commenter with you may have hit on something. 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.
Thinking of one (not me) it’s delivery driver -> enlisted service -> mid level finance (not London)
> 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.
Boomers benefited from a ton. Significantly cheaper housing, education, healthcare, childcare, groceries, cars, gas. Even when adjusted for inflation. Employment was significantly easier to get, especially without degrees, and those easier to get jobs paid relatively much more in terms of the ratio of income to cost of living.
They were part of a generation that benefited from enormous house price appreciation due to a combination of falling interest rates went from almost 15% down to under 5% (this is about 3x on its own) and the fall in house building which drove up prices and rents generally.
This effect is somewhat less pronounced outside of southern England.