Halstead and Lind on education and assets, twenty-five years on: baby bonds, schools and Spain

Ted Halstead and Michael Lind's The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics came out in 2001, and two of its proposals sit naturally together: what the state spends on a child's school, and what it puts in a child's name at birth. Our explainer of the book covers the whole programme, and on day 1 we set out a capital endowment at birth for Spain. This piece looks at what happened to the education-and-assets idea in the twenty-five years since, in Britain, in the United States and in Spain, and what that record says about Spain's mobility problem, which Democracia 21's launch speech calls the country's number one priority.

Start with what the book said, as The American Prospect's review reported it. On schools, Halstead and Lind wanted federal equalisation of education spending, and pupils able to use government money at the public or private school of their choice. On assets, every child would get a $6,000 nest egg at birth, which could be used for education, housing, health, business or retirement. The reviewer liked the equity and disliked the vouchers, warning they could increase segregation. Read together, the two proposals make one argument. Equal money for every child's school, then capital in every young person's hands, so that the start of adult life depends less on the family bank account.

What the asset idea did next

Britain went first. The Child Trust Fund paid more than £2 billion into accounts for 6.3 million children born between 2002 and early 2011, and our day-1 piece covers how it was set up and closed. The part that matters twenty-five years on is who fell through the gaps. The National Audit Office found that HMRC had to open 1.7 million accounts itself because parents did not, and just over half of those were for children from low-income families, who held 36% of all accounts. The 2011 evaluation found the scheme raised saving for children in households that did not own their home, and found no significant effect across all children. The government, the auditors added, lacks the data to say how the low-income young people the scheme targeted have actually fared.

Then the accounts started maturing. In September 2025 HMRC reported that 758,000 matured accounts belonging to 18 to 23 year olds had not been claimed, with an average of £2,242 each. By our arithmetic that is roughly £1.7 billion sitting in the names of young adults, many of whom may not know it is there. HMRC runs a free online tracing tool, and more than 563,000 young people used it in the year to August 2025. The asset was built. The institution that would connect it to the young person at 18 was an afterthought.

Connecticut learned from that. Its baby bonds started on 1 July 2023: the state treasurer invests $3,200 for every baby whose birth is covered by HUSKY, the state's Medicaid programme. Nobody applies. By July 2025 more than 33,000 children were enrolled and the fund had grown from $398 million to $485 million. Between 18 and 30 the young person can claim it, for a home in Connecticut, higher education or job training, a local business or a retirement account, and the treasurer projects each account at $11,000 to $24,000 by then. Automatic, targeted at poor children and tied to specific uses, education first among them.

Washington took the idea national in 2025, with a different design. The law enacted on 4 July 2025 created Trump Accounts, a new type of individual retirement account for children, with a one-time $1,000 federal contribution for US citizens born from 2025 to 2028. At first families had to file a form to open the account and elect the $1,000. By 31 March 2026 the IRS reported more than 4 million children signed up, with more than 1 million covered by elections for the $1,000. From 1 October 2026 the Treasury enrols eligible children automatically, though families still have to claim and activate the account and elect the contribution. The federal scheme is drifting towards Connecticut's design, one step at a time.

Spain had its own moment in the 2023 election campaign. Sumar proposed a "universal inheritance" of €20,000, with the right acquired at 18 and the money paid at 23, for training, a first job or a business, regardless of family income and financed by a bigger wealth tax. El Independiente estimated the cost at about €10.5 billion a year, based on roughly 525,000 people turning 23, and noted its resemblance to Thomas Piketty's proposal of an inheritance for everyone at 25.

What twenty-five years teach Spain

Put the record side by side and the asset half of Halstead and Lind holds up well. Money in a child's name grows over eighteen years, and public deposits matter most for the poorest children, whose families can add the least. What the record adds is that the asset is only as good as the plumbing around it. Britain opened accounts by default as a fallback, then left young adults to find them. Connecticut opens them automatically and names the uses at the start. Washington began with forms and is now adding automatic enrolment.

Spain's mobility problem is mostly an education problem, as our social mobility explainer shows with the data: where you grew up still decides your chances of a degree. That is where the school half of the book comes back in. Halstead and Lind's equal funding has its Spanish version in programmes for disadvantaged schools and in the tutoring entitlement we proposed yesterday. The nest egg brings the choice to the young person, who holds the money and decides how to spend it at 18.

The left is right that public money should equalise starting points, in the school and in the bank. The market-liberal tradition is right that ownership changes how people plan, and that a young person should hold the stake and choose how to use it. The idea that fits neither is to wire the asset into the education system so it can't get lost. Open the account automatically when the birth is registered, as our day-1 proposal says. Show the balance to the pupil and the family at the end of compulsory schooling, through the school's guidance service, at the moment young people decide between bachillerato, vocational training or work. Release it at 18 through the same platform that pays the state's student grants, so the young person who applies for a grant sees both sums together and plans with both. Trace every unclaimed account through the tax agency and pay it out automatically, so Spain never ends up with its own 758,000.

The administration does the work, and the money reaches the young person at the moment of the decision that most affects mobility. Halstead and Lind put the school and the nest egg in the same book, and Spain already has the school records, the grant platform and the tax agency to join them up.