This is your weekly instalment of WTF is going on because, these days, a lot can happen in a week…
Money makes the world go round, whether you like it or not. Not having enough money to get on and participate in that world has been found to be a number one factor in anxiety and depression. Is it any wonder? Nothing is guaranteed to keep you awake at night like not knowing how you’ll pay your rent, whether you’ll be able to buy food to eat, keep up with your credit card repayments or, even, afford to get to work the next day. You’ve only just been paid and you know that once you’ve paid your landlord and factored in transport you’ll be relying on loans and credit just to make ends meet.
WATCH NOW: What Do Young Women In Skegness Think About Politics
I would know, I’ve borrowed money to pay rent in the past. I’ve used credit cards to get deposits together when moving from one rented home to another. I’ve had my card rejected when trying to buy a discounted bag of spinach and I’ve had nobody I could ask for help. I’ve earned what you might think is decent money (by which I mean the national average) and still struggled.
This, and worse, is the reality of everyday life for many people across the country and young women, in particular, are suffering. I don’t have children who depend on me or earn minimum wage, but many of the young women affected by this do. A recent report found that 51% of young women are borrowing just to make it to the next payday and Government figures show thatyoung women are more likely declare themselves insolvent than young men.
Today the Young Women’s Trust has released a report titled ‘The Worrying Times’ which compounds all of the above. Its findings suggest a generation who are downtrodden, losing hope and fearing for their futures with a third of young people reporting that they feel more anxious than this time last year. The reported causes of this anxiety were leaving the EU, followed by worried about being able to buy a home in the future and, then, their current financial situation. Half of those surveyed say they ‘feel worried about the future’.
It’s grim, isn’t it? All of this is because jobs are becoming increasingly insecure, the cost of living is rising and wages, broadly, have been in a state of stagnation for years. It has become a common feature of conversations about ‘how shit everything is’ in certain circles to blame it all on Brexit. Let’s be clear: all of this was brewing long before the referendum that resulted in Brexit took place.
The real kicker? It shouldn’t be like this and it doesn’t have to be.
If this is what the effects of zero-hours contracts, an unstable and unregulated private rental market and political precariousness look like, then something has to change. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour has seemingly been a catalyst for a political awakening amongst the young. Indeed, his Labour conference speech put housing instability and fairness broadly front and centre of the agenda and the government has said it is banning letting fees to make renting fairer, but talk is cheap and all of this will take time. Young women can't afford to wait.
Young people are living in an increasingly expensive world and zero hours contracts don’t pay. Housing benefit for the 18-21s was callously axed and, while I don’t buy the argument that student loans are in principal unfair, the loss of maintenance grants undoubtedly is. It’s also unthinkable that the National Living Wage doesn’t apply to the under 25s. All of this is nothing short of myopic.
‘Make no mistake’ Dr Carole Easton, Chief Executive of the Young Women’s Trust, told The Debrief, ‘we’re talking about a generation of young people in crisis…it’s not in any of our interests to write off an entire generation’. There’s no doubt that all of this affects young men too, it simply isn’t good enough. One of the Young Women’s Trust’s suggestions is the introduction of a Minister for Young People, that would be a good start. What better way to make sure the interests of young people, who experience the housing crisis acutely every day and are on the receiving end of a generational pay gap in real terms while the cost of living rises, by and large, because older generations voted to leave the European Union and cause great turmoil, for the foreseeable future at least.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.