Elderly Migration and Education Spending

Intergenerational Conflict Revisited

Originally published in Public Budgeting & Finance

Population aging can lead to an intergenerational competition for scarce resources between the voters of different age groups.

Introduction: Retirees have become an important demographic group for the fiscal systems of government in the United States. A major factor in the rise of their importance is the rapid increase in elderly population. An important possible consequence of population aging is increasing fiscal pressure to spend on social security, health care, and other welfare programs that benefit the elderly at the expense of other programs such as education that benefit the young. In other words, population aging can lead to an intergenerational competition for scarce resources between the voters of different age groups.

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