Book

The realities of mounting government debt, tax burdens, and an aging population raise serious concerns about the financial legacy confronting future generations. How great a fiscal burden will current policies leave to subsequent generations, and how might changes in those policies alter the intergenerational distribution of public welfare? Generational accounting has recently emerged as a robust new method of fiscal analysis and planning designed to assess the long-term sustainability of fiscal policy and to measure the extent of the financial load ultimately borne by present and future generations. A seminal contribution to public economics, generational accounting has already been adopted by 23 nations around the world.

Combining the latest and most extensive country-by-country generational analyses with a comprehensive review of generational accounting's innovative methodology, these papers are a consummate resource for economists, political scientists, and policy makers concerned with fiscal health and responsibility.

Mounting government obligations and aging populations raise very serious concerns about the fiscal burdens left to future generations. Generational accounting, a method of long-term fiscal planning and analysis, directly measures these burdens as well as the costs of lowering them. The volume combines the latest and most extensive country-by-country generational analyses with a comprehensive review of generational accounting's innovative methodology and a devastating critique of conventional deficit accounting.