For New Yorkers Under 45, Parental Aid Outpaces Paychecks in the Hunt for Homeownership

In New York, where striving is a creed, the rise of “inheritocracy” bodes ill for those without access to parental wealth—inverting once-cherished ideals of merit.

On a recent Friday in Brooklyn, a young professional tried to calculate when she might finally escape her roommate’s shadow. The median price for a Manhattan home—a rather tepid $1.2m, according to Douglas Elliman—remains far beyond the reach of most New Yorkers under 45. But for a growing cohort, the surest path to a front-door key is not a decade spent clocking in on Madison Avenue, but the “Bank of Mom and Dad.”

This is not merely local strife. Eliza Filby, the British historian and author of Inheritocracy: It’s Time to Talk About the Bank of Mum and Dad, contends that for those under 45, family largesse now eclipses professional achievement as the main driver of upward mobility. In her words, “it is not what you earn or learn, but whether you have access to parental wealth” that decides your fate in today’s urban economies.

The descendants of the Baby Boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—find themselves in a peculiar situation. Their parents, who often clambered up the economic ladder via education and elbow grease, built fortunes at a time of buoyant growth, cheap housing, and expanding universities. Younger generations, inheriting stagnant wages and eye-watering living costs, must now rely on family assets to chase similar milestones, especially in places like New York.

Filby’s thesis portends a sobering shift for both city and society. The “herenciocracia”, as she dubs it, is a pointed inversion of the American meritocracy, that old belief that graft and talent can vault a determined soul anywhere. If accessing homeownership, stable careers, or even tolerable apartments depends not on the yielding of diplomas or diligence, but on the caprice of family endowments, the social compact deserves scrutiny.

The implications for New York City, ever a crucible of ambition, are stark. According to the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, only 27% of millennial New Yorkers own homes, compared with nearly half of Baby Boomers at the same age. Those without family wealth—who are, disproportionately, people of color and immigrants—are left to chase a Sisyphean dream, while their counterparts glide forward with a parentally supplied tailwind.

Beyond housing, the inheritance effect radiates through job markets, education, and culture. With college debt mounting (the average New York State graduate now owes over $35,000), and entry salaries for even white-collar jobs stubbornly paltry, family connections and cash matter more than ever. Access to internships—often unpaid, but career-launching—frequently relies on social capital rather than ability. Even in creative fields, New York’s reputation as a meritocratic magnet is giving way to whispers about “legacy kids” and “trust-fund artists.”

The city’s economy, dependent on a constant influx of hungry, striving talent, could suffer from this torpor. If mobility is balkanized by inheritance, networks ossify, dynamism wanes, and the city’s fabled churn slows. Local officials fret about an exodus of young adults, especially those unable to tap parental largesse, to cheaper climes such as Philadelphia or Atlanta.

The rise of inheritocracy is hardly just a Gotham melodrama

Across developed economies, the turn is striking. In London, Paris and Toronto, research shows similar patterns: Millennials and Generation Z are less likely to exceed their parents’ financial status, and more dependent on inherited boosts. Filby’s work echoes studies by the OECD and the Brookings Institution, which warn that intergenerational wealth transfer is fast displacing social mobility as the key determinant of life chances. Even Germany—once the poster child for social democracy—now sees family donations underpinning nearly a third of first-home purchases by the under-40s.

Yet nowhere is the tension more acute than in America, whose founding myths—Ellis Island, Horatio Alger, bootstraps—are singularly allergic to the idea that birth trumps effort. While New York Governor Kathy Hochul launches housing plans focused on supply (her $25bn five-year plan is ambitious but proceeds in fits and starts), policy remains largely silent on the role of inherited capital. At the city level, proposals to expand affordable housing and regulate speculation jostle with political obstacles and local resistance. Some cities experiment with inheritance taxes or first-time buyer relief, but such efforts remain puny alongside the scale of the challenge.

To be sure, the notion of meritocracy always had its ironies. As Filby reminds, Michael Young—the British sociologist who coined the word in 1958—intended it as satire, not aspiration. Young’s dystopian vision morphed, over decades, into a chestnut beloved by politicians and strivers alike. The American version, in particular, elided the role of luck, privilege, and inheritances, preferring to trumpet stories of Tom, Dick, and Kamala who “made it.”

What now? We reckon that “inheritocracy” serves as both an accurate diagnosis and a cautionary tale. While parental support cushions many from the city’s harsher edges, its consolidation as the new rule threatens the very diversity and dynamism that keep New York vital. Policymakers—if they wish to preserve a society that prizes ability over ancestry—would do well to scrutinize not just how wealth is taxed and spent, but how opportunity itself is structured. Without deft intervention, urban America risks entrenching advantage and eroding the faith that Manhattanites—and Americans—have always placed in striving.

In the meantime, the young New Yorker’s question remains: Will persistence and ability suffice, or must one first choose the right parents? If today’s housing gridlock is any guide, this city, for all its brilliance, increasingly rewards pedigree over pluck—a curious twist for the self-styled capital of merit. ■