Generational Accounts for the United States: An Update
用代际账户法评估美国财政政策的代际平衡，发现1995年未来世代面临比新生儿高72%的终身净税率，但近年GDP和税收增长、国防支出下降可能缩小这一差距。
Although relatively new, generational accounting has been used in 26 countries to evaluate the generational stance of national fiscal policies. Generational accounting calculates the size of prospective net tax burdens and lifetime net tax rates that different generations face under current fiscal policy-information that standard budget presentations do not reveal. This method can also be used to calculate the policy changes required for achieving a generationally balanced and therefore sustainable fiscal policy that implies equal lifetime net tax rates on today's newborns and future generations (those born after 1998). Calculations made two years ago suggested a sizable generational imbalance in U.S. fiscal policy, implying lifetime net tax rates on future generations that are 72 percent higher than those on newborns in 1995. Since then, unexpectedly strong growth in both gross domestic product (GDP) and the tax share of GDP has boosted revenues, and slow growth in defense spending has reduced federal purchases as a share of GDP to a postwar low. Those developments augur federal budget surpluses for at least a decade and portend a corresponding reduction in the generational imbalance.