Generational Accounting in the UK

This paper presents the first set of generational accounts for the United Kingdom. We find that under our baseline scenario, in which pensions are price indexed and health expenditure grows modestly, the imbalance in UK generational policy is small when compared with other leading industrial countries like the United States, Japan, and Germany. However, under an alternative policy scenario, where all social benefits are wage‐indexed and health care spending is increased, there is a larger fiscal bill left for future generations to pay. In this case, achieving generational balance would require much stronger medicine.