YOUNG people should be forced to vote in the first election after they turn 18 in a bid to reverse declining turnouts, a think tank said.

The Institute for Public Policy Research said research showed taking part in elections was a habit formed early in life.

Requiring first-timers to fill in a ballot paper - with an added "none of the above" option - would foster a lasting desire to have a say, it suggested.

The left-leaning IPPR warned that elections were increasingly being decided by older, better-off voters, with the drop off in participation starker among younger, poorer sections of the electorate.

At the 1970 general election the gap between the proportion of 18-24 year olds and over-65s voting was 18 points but by 2010 it had risen to 32 - with just 44 per cent of the youngest group going to the ballot box, its report noted.

And that between the richest and poorest socio-economic groups had soared from four points to 23 over the same period, showing there were "clear inequalities of influence between rich and poor at the ballot box".

One result was that austerity measures imposed from 2010 took twice as much as a proportion of income and services from non-voters as those who did help choose the new government.

Polling for the report found only one in four of those in the DE socio-economic groups believed democracy "addresses their interests well" and almost two thirds thought it did badly.

IPPR research fellow Mat Lawrence said: "Compulsory voting for first-time voters could help kick start the habit of a lifetime. Without radical reform, we risk sleepwalking into a more divided democracy.

"Long-run decline in voter turnout in the UK is being driven by the relative collapse in participation among the young and the less well-off, not by a uniform decline in turnout among all groups.

"A distinctive non-voting population - generally younger and poorer - heightens political inequality by giving some groups far greater influence at the ballot box."

The high turnout in the Scottish independence referendum and the rise of grassroots groups provided reasons for optimism, he said, but "representative democracy clearly needs a reboot.

"The old fear that democracy would lead to the tyranny of the majority, has increasingly been replaced by a fear of the tyranny of the minority."