As the post-war baby boomers approach retirement (the first wave are retiring in 2011), there has been an explosion of interest in intergenerational relations, and, more specifically, the financial and economic circumstances of different age cohorts. Ed Howker and Shiv Malik's Jilted Generation tackles this issue from the perspective of today's young people, whereas Francis Beckett's What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? focuses on the boomers. Yet both reach the same conclusions: the baby boom generation benefited from a unique set of historical circumstances, and rather than seeking to share their good fortune with their children's generation, they have cruelly pulled the ladder up. Howker and Malik are not wrong to document the myriad problems today's young people will encounter in trying to find jobs, start families, get on to the housing ladder or even simply ‘have a say’. Similarly, Beckett is not wrong to point out the advantages bestowed upon the baby boomers, and the reckless way in which their inheritance has been handled by recent boomer-led governments. However, although for the most part both books succeed, judged on their own terms, it is also probable that examining these developments through the prism of intergenerational fairness obscures more than it explains. Certainly, it seems neither Beckett nor Howker and Malik have come across the more sober analysis published a year earlier in David Piachaud, John Macnicol and Jane Lewis’ extended think-piece Just Ageing? Fairness, Equality and the Life Course, which argues persuasively that one generation cannot be held collectively responsible for the misfortunes faced by another. For instance, inequality within generations, as well as between generations, renders any attempt to attribute blame a futile endeavour.

In fairness to Howker and Malik, they state that their intent is to appraise the position of young people, without necessarily accusing the baby boomers of intergenerational theft, unlike other examples of the popular literature on this issue. Yet in detailing the apparent ‘21 year binge’ of the baby boom generation, they do not stop very far short of an accusatory tone. There are many things to recommend about the book. Its empirical breadth is very impressive, although the selective, journalistic use of evidence in support of the argument undermines its credibility in places. It is also extremely well-written, although an overly abstract concluding chapter is out-of-step with the very real feel of the rest of the text. Crucially, Jilted Generation busts many myths surrounding the popular understanding of young people today, and for that alone it deserves applause. An examination of housing is the flagship contribution of Jilted Generation to the intergenerational relations debate, and it is hard to disagree with Howker and Malik's findings that the decline in construction, an increase in prices despite falling standards and sizes, the sale of public housing, and the end of tax relief for mortgage interest payments have all combined to make buying a home a daunting and almost impossible prospect for many young people. This is exacerbated by the appalling state of the private rental market. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book, however, is Howker and Malik's treatise on the ‘postponement of adulthood’, a thread which features throughout. It is not simply that young people struggle to buy a house, find employment, and start saving; more importantly, these struggles delay their attainment of full adulthood. This is something that may affect their entire lives, and moreover, may have an impact on society in general rather than simply the individuals directly affected. In making this observation, Howker and Malik overcome the snarling ‘us versus them’ approach that occasionally surfaces in Jilted Generation.

It must be noted, however, that the generational argument also takes Howker and Malik down some very strange narrative paths. For instance, in criticising the public debt that young people will inherit, they more or less endorse the current government's deficit reduction plan, despite the probability that the impact on jobs, public services and tax rates will further disadvantage today's young people. Additionally, in criticising the generous, unfunded pensions that the baby boomers are set to receive from the state and their employers, Howker and Malik suggest that only funded pension schemes are intergenerationally fair, despite the profound consequences for pensioner poverty that would result when today's young people retire if the UK pensions system adopted a fully funded model.

Political biographer (and baby boomer) Francis Beckett essentially constructs a biography of his generation, in an attempt to explain and contextualise the behaviour and attitudes of the baby boom cohort towards their children's generation. He finds few grounds for sympathy with his peers. For Beckett, the baby boomers benefited from the sacrifice, and reforming zeal, of its predecessor generations; more precisely, those within previous generations that created the welfare state and the NHS. Readers of What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? will be left in no doubt that Beckett's sympathies lie with so-called ‘Old Labour’, and in particular the Attlee government, although he also associates cuddly, ‘one nation’ conservatism with the ‘greatest generation’. The strength of the book lies in Beckett's storytelling ability, married frequently to his intimate knowledge of Britain's boomer Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. For Beckett, Blair and Brown's dismantling of Attlee's legacy can be explained by their generational identity – obsessed with youth, newness and individualism, and inexperienced in hardship. Parts of the narrative, however, undermine Beckett's generational reading of history. For instance, the book contains many tales about the nature of the educational systems experienced by the baby boomers. But it was their parents, not the boomers themselves, that allowed such systems to persist. Furthermore, unable to marshal compelling evidence against New Labour, it is actually politicians born in the inter-war period (chiefly Margaret Thatcher) that Beckett blames for the woes of today's young people.

Perhaps the most interesting set of stories in What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? concerns the apparent radicalism of the 1960s. Beckett expertly details how the youthful boomers were rebels without a cause, playing at pretentious ‘lefter-than-thou’ politics without ever demonstrating the moral compass of their forebears, before allowing their shallow anti-establishment mentality to be swallowed whole by a phoney revolution of the right in the 1970s. While highly illuminating, even this is perhaps symptomatic of the book's over-reliance on the experience of a privileged minority of university-educated baby boomers. Beckett is right to show how many boomers got rich on the back of the Attlee reforms, then consolidated their wealth in later life – but many, indeed most, were never granted such opportunities.

Both books ignore the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, which impacted boomers profoundly during their working lives, choosing instead to focus on implicating boomers in causing the more recent recession. Both, shamefully, downplay the reality of inequality and diversity in the experiences, opportunities and wealth of different age groups (not to mention the barriers faced by boomer women in the labour market). Howker and Malik's indictment of the rise of unpaid internships in today's graduate labour market is fascinating – but they do not spend enough time considering the plight of those for whom even internships are an unattainable goal. Curiously, both books assume a priori that all generations want the same thing; few attempts are made to consider whether young people actually covet the assets and opportunities supposedly hoarded by their parents. What is the point of a generational analysis if we cannot at the very least recognise that generations are different?

Piachaud et al.'s think-piece offers a much-needed, forensic analysis of intergenerational fairness, as well as an attempt to clear up the historical and conceptual muddles that tarnish this debate. The authors remind us that inequalities are the product of many different factors, the impact of which will evolve over individuals’ life courses. They also point out that the baby boomers are perhaps the most unequal generation in living memory. They may be collectively wealthier, and less likely to be in poverty, than today's retirees, but the new wealth created by the baby boomer generation is concentrated among only a small minority of its members. The think-piece also documents the long history of debates on intergenerational fairness. Inevitably, there will always be a degree of misunderstanding between age cohorts; while different terminology may have been used in the past, since the birth of mass society tension and occasional antipathy have been features of intergenerational relations. Despite this, a majority in all age groups want the state to spend more on both the old and the young.

The most interesting aspect of Piachaud et al.'s contribution is their discussion of intergenerational transfers. Within families, far from depriving younger relatives, older generations are vital sources of support and opportunities for their eventual heirs. Different cohorts may benefit from different collective inheritances, but these discrepancies are ‘resolved’ within families as financial resources, and less tangible goods like unpaid care, are transferred between generations. Indeed, such transfers are an important factor in the persistence of socio-economic inequalities that exist within generations. Of course, what constitutes ‘the family’ is itself evolving – with unknown impacts on intergenerational fairness. Jilted Generation does occasionally make reference to the mediating role of the family, but it is an issue largely neglected by Beckett's book.

Nevertheless, while Piachaud et al.'s analysis is extremely welcome, it should not fully distract us from the unique difficulties faced by today's young people. The main flaw of Just Ageing? Fairness, Equality and the Life Course is perhaps that it fails to recognise this challenge (although presumably this was outside the authors’ remit). There is a crucial distinction, however, between recognising the problems encountered by young people in society and the economy, and defining these problems as symptomatic of intergenerational conflict – let alone a conflict ignited by the selfish behaviour of one particular cohort. Clearly, while not entirely without merit, the existing examples of generational analyses have been too quick to attribute blame to the baby boomers. In addition, they have not been sufficiently prepared to identify those within the baby boom cohort that have not benefited significantly from recent socio-economic trends – or those within the current generation of young people that have benefited from inheritances passed across the generation divide.