Intergenerational equity and public spending

Concerns over public spending for elders and children are not new. Some of our previous work, combined with the analysis by Susmita Pati and colleagues in this volume of Health Affairs, documents a substantial divergence of social welfare spending for children and elders between 1965 and 2000. Looking to the future, our concern is that social welfare spending for children and elders will be driven more by political concerns and macroeconomic trends than by the needs of the two populations. We argue that the country needs to adopt a new fairness doctrine in allocating social welfare resources, whereby the needs of both groups are met.