Population Aging, Class Context, and Age Inequality in Public Spending

Although recent experiences in the United States suggest that population aging, for both demographic and political reasons, favors public spending for the elderly relative to children, many European nations with different political environments show no shuch pattern. This paper investigates age inequality or bias in public spending for these two age-based dependent groups using annual time-series data for 18 advanced industrial democracies. The results show that a large aged population reduces age inequality in favor of the eldearly in the presence of (1) class-based corporatism and (2) strong leftist parties, whereas a large aged population increases age inequality in the absence of these two factors.