Part 6/9:
The global financial crisis of 2008 struck Britain like a devastating earthquake, obliterating savings, collapsing banks, and leaving millions in economic despair. Adah's wages stagnated, and the once-accessible dream of home ownership slipped away from her children, whose average age for first-time buyers rose from 23 in the 1960s to 30 by the late 2000s.
Austerity measures that followed the crisis further eroded public services, which had once supported a burgeoning middle class. Between 2008 and 2012, real wages saw their worst decline since World War II, while housing affordability dwindled and inequality escalated.