Have the Baby Boomers Stolen the Family Silver? Measuring Cohort People Power on Public Expenditures

• In Event: 544 - Regular Session. Welfare State 2

Abstract

In most rich democracies, young people receive vastly less in state-transfers than old, leading some in the popular press to accuse the Baby Boomers of hijacking the welfare state. Dynamics like this one are symptomatic of a wider rise in age-based mobilizations, which some have taken to calling ‘chronos politics.’ On the other hand, it used to be the Baby Boomers that commentators were afraid would end up not receiving their fair share, as their large relative size would lead to economic and social shortages. Our paper uses three decades of national-level population and expenditure data on 23 countries, to explore how the relative size of age groups and cohorts affect per capita social spending across five social expenditure areas. We find that shortages dominate the relationship between outsized cohorts and state spending. Our results suggest that age-based mobilizations are more likely reactions to the diminishing levels of per capita social spending than they are groups exploiting their disproportionate size.

Authors

• Jason O. Jensen, McGill University

• Charles Plante, McGill University