Abstract

Concern with intergenerational justice has long been a focus of economics. This essay considers the effort; over the last three decades; to quantify generational fiscal burdens using label-free fiscal gap and generational accounting. It also points out that government debt -- the conventional metric for assessing generational fiscal justice;– has no grounding in economic theory. Instead; official debt is the result of economically arbitrary government labelling decisions: whether to call receipts “taxes” rather than “borrowing” and whether to call payments “transfer payments” rather than “debt service”. Via their choice of words; governments decide which obligations to put on; and which to keep off; the books. The essay also looks to the future of generational fiscal-justice analysis. Rapid computational advances are permitting economists to understand not just direct government intergenerational redistribution; but also how such policies impact the economy that future generations will inherit.