LESS affluent young workers face a threat to their hope of buying a home from well-off peers who are purchasing properties with cash inherited from their family, according to a new report.

The Stirling University study has found the rise in home ownership over the past 20 years has been exclusively driven by the over-45s. Equally, there was a net decline in the under-45s' buying properties.

But a rising number of young people are cash buyers, needing no mortgages, suggesting it is an inheritance that gets them on the ladder, said the report by the university's Professor David Bell.

Outright purchases tends to pushes up prices, making it more likely that those on lower wages, often frozen or cut in recent years, cannot save up enough of a deposit to escape costly private rentals or leave the family nest.

Prof Bell, who will outline his findings in a David Hume Institute seminar at the Royal Society of Edinburgh on Monday, pointed to a rise of 344,000 in the number of owner-occupier households between 1994 and 2012.

But he added: "Over half of this increase was accounted for by households where the head of the household was aged 65 or over, and the remainder was accounted for by households aged over 45. Amongst those aged under 45 there was a net decline in home ownership.

"Despite this, however, there was an increase in the number of younger households who owned their home outright [as opposed to with a mortgage] which may signal an increase in inequality of property wealth within the younger generation."

His report added that those without the financial clout of inheritances saw their savings curtailed by rising private rents unless they stay with their parents.

The gap between those able to fund property moves has further widened with pay differentials, it added. "House price rises are creating a situation whereby younger people are likely to be increasingly reliant on inheritances to purchase a property.

"Those who cannot purchase a property face a choice between living in increasingly expensive private rented accommodation, which limits their ability to save, or to remain living with parents. The house price bubble therefore seems to be increasing inter-generational inequality and as a result is likely to lead to increases in intragenerational inequality among subsequent generations."

Prof Bell, whose seminar ("Inequality in Scotland - what are the causes and what are the implications?") calls on the Scottish Government to use its new property tax-powers to tackle the "inter-generational and intra-generational inequality".

The study also finds sharp income differences between generations, as the over-50s have enjoyed rising wages in recent years, unlike those aged 18 to 29.

"The young as a group appear to have been doing relatively badly in the labour market," it states. "Rates of unemployment among the young have risen relatively faster than those of prime age or older since well before the recession. And even among those in work, the wages of younger workers have fallen relative to those of older workers."

Prof Bell said: "The main purpose of the housing market should be to provide accommodation, but it now also seems to be a mechanism that sustains and magnifies inter-generational inequality.

"This might be an issue that a new Scottish Parliament with enhanced tax powers might wish to address."

Ray Perman, director of the David Hume Institute, said: "If we want to create a fairer country we have to know how serious inequality is in Scotland and how it is affecting people.