F4 National Institute Economic Review No.
227 February 2014
commentary: intergenerational and
intragenerational equity
Jonathan Portes*
The concept of ‘intergenerational fairness’ was introduced
to the UK policy debate by David Willetts MP (now,
somewhat ironically, the Minister for Universities and
Science, and hence responsible for the new system of
student finance) in his book, The Pinch: How the Baby
Boomers stole their childrens’ future and how they can
give it back (Willetts, 2010). But it has only taken off
in political discussion over the past couple of years; the
idea that somehow the old are getting a better deal than
the young, both before the financial crisis and during the
ensuing period of austerity, has gained popularity across
the political spectrum. As Angus Hanton, Director of the
Intergenerational Foundation, put it (Intergenerational
Foundation, 2013):
“Rising intergenerational unfairness should matter to
everyone. The usual focus on inequality between rich
and poor misses the important inequalities between
generations. Poorer young people are increasingly and
systematically financing richer older people. Urgent
action must be taken as the Baby Boom cohort starts
to retire.”
But what does ‘intergenerational fairness’ (or its opposite)
mean? And how would we know if it is ‘rising’? In
practice, this discussion is bedevilled by confusion, both
conceptual and empirical. The purpose of this article is
to set out some of the possible meanings of the term
‘intergenerational fairness’ and, at a very stylised level,
what the evidence suggests. I identify four different, and
conceptually distinct, issues:
*National Institute of Economic and Social Research and Centre for Macroeconomics. I am grateful to Raquel Fernandez for very helpful
comments and to various authors at the Institute for Fiscal Studies for permission to reproduce two of the charts. E-mail: j.portes@
niesr.ac.uk.
a) The evolution of the relative incomes of different
cohorts. Have older generations (and in particular
pensioners) done particularly well by comparison to
younger generations over the past twenty years or
so?
b) The burden of austerity: have the specific policy
measures taken over the past few years to reduce the
deficit hit the young particularly hard, while favouring
the old?
c) Are the young ‘subsidising’ the old via taxation and
the provision of public services?
d) Will this generation ‘be the first to be worse off than
their parents’?
What has happened to incomes?
Have pensioners done better than non-pensioners?
Fortunately, the ONS produces a very long series
for household incomes. From 1977 to 2011, median
equivalised disposable income (that is, adjusted for
family size) for pensioner households rose from £7,090
to £19,250 (in 2011–12 prices). The rise for non-
pensioner households was from £12,080 to £25,700
(ONS, 2013).
So the incomes of pensioner households rose significantly
faster on average than for non-pensioners. But there
is no indication that this process accelerated in recent
years; the pace of convergence was roughly the same
 Portes Commentary: Intergenerational and intragenerational equity  F5

Figure 1a. Growth in non-retired household income Figure 1b. Growth in retired household income

£60,000
60
90
80 50
£50,000
70
40
£40,000
60

£ thousands
£ thousands

50 £30,000
30
40
30 £20,000
20

20
£10,000
10
10
0 £00
Income deciles Income deciles

1996-97 2011-12
1996-97 2011-12

Source: ONS, author’s calculations.

in the first half of this period as in the second. And, of

course, pensioner incomes remain considerably lower Figure 2. Basic pension plus winter fuel payments as a
than non-pensioner incomes throughout this period, percentage of average earnings
even on an equivalised basis. The discrepancy would
be considerably larger in cash terms, since pensioner 30%
households are smaller on average. The median non-
retired household, with an income of more than 25%
£25,000, would still be at about the 80th percentile of
the pensioner income distribution; in other words only 20%
20 per cent of retired households are better off than
the median non-retired household. Most pensioners are 15%
not ‘rich’ compared to non-pensioners.
10%
What about the distribution of these gains? Figure 1 shows
5%
real income growth by decile for retired and non-retired
households, between 1996–7 and 2011–12. It shows that
0%
gains were actually reasonably well spread, with poor
1961

1967

1973

1979

1985

1991

1997

2003

2009

non-retired households, and middle-income retired ones,

doing relatively well (although these statistics, based on
survey data, do not show the particularly strong growth Basic pension plus WFP as percentage of average earnings
for incomes of the very highest earners – the top 1 per Source: DWP, author’s calculations.
cent and 0.1 per cent – during this period). Even leaving
this aside, it remains the case that inequality within both
the retired and non-retired groups is much greater than
disparities between the two.
F6 National Institute Economic Review No. 227 February 2014
What are the drivers of this relative improvement in the
position of pensioners? It appears to be a combination
of two factors: the maturing of relatively generous
defined benefit pension schemes has helped middle and
upper income pensioners, while the introduction of
Pension Credit and the Minimum Income Guarantee has
benefited poorer ones, with a notable fall in pensioner
poverty (as measured by relative income) over the past
decade (DWP, 2013).
It does not, however, represent any increased generosity in
the level of the basic, non-means-tested state pension: even
including ancillary universal benefits such as Winter Fuel
Payments (see below) the value of the basic state pension
relative to earnings fell very substantially in the 1980s
and 1990s, and has not recovered significantly since. As
with the income distribution as a whole (Portes, 2011),
the 2000s saw an increase in the inequality of original
income (before tax and benefits) that was in large part
mitigated by increases in the redistributive impact of the
tax and benefit system, but most of that redistribution
was intragenerational rather than intergenerational.
The burden of austerity
While the above analysis suggests that pensioners have
been doing rather better than non-pensioners – in the
sense that their incomes have been catching up – the
current focus of the political debate on ‘intergenerational
Figure 3. Distributional impact of tax and benefit changes
Percentage change in net income
0%
-2%
-4%
-6%
-8%
-10%
-12%
-14%
Poorest 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Richest
Income decile group
Households with children
Pensioner households
Working-age without children
Source: IFS Green Budget 2013.
fairness’ has been driven by a set of policy decisions taken
by the Coalition government. It is argued that these have
ensured that older people have been ‘protected’ from the
spending cuts and tax rises imposed to reduce the budget
deficit. These policies include:
• The ‘triple lock’, guaranteeing that pensions should be
increased by 2.5 per cent, earnings or RPI, whichever
is the greater;
• Ancillary to this, the Prime Minister’s personal
commitment to preserving other universal pensioner
benefits (winter fuel payments, free bus passes);
• At the same time, a series of spending cuts which
appear to fall most heavily on the relatively young: the
abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance,
the very large increase in university tuition fees, large
cuts to working age benefits and tax credits, while
health spending (which is heavily weighted towards
the old) is protected in real terms.
On the face of it, it does seem obvious that these policy
changes will, taken together, tend to hurt those of
working age rather more than pensioners. And indeed
this is the case. Figure 3, from the IFS Green Budget
2013, shows the distributional impact of tax and benefit
reforms.
Pensioner households do indeed lose considerably less on
average than working age households without children.
But in fact working age households without children do
no worse than pensioners. And arguably more important
are the intra- (rather than inter-) generational issues.
Poorer pensioners have indeed been protected; less so
richer ones. By contrast, relatively well off working-age
households without children have lost very little, except
at the very top, while poorer childless households have
suffered. Meanwhile, households with children have lost
out across the board. This is likely to reflect the net impact
of cuts to working age benefits, especially disability-
related benefits, hitting poorer working-age households
(with and without children); cuts to child benefit and tax
credits, hitting families across the board; the increase in
the personal allowance, benefiting particularly middle-
All income working households; and the protection to
poorer pensioners afforded by the triple lock.
In the light of this, it is interesting to consider the
implications of one policy that has become something
of a lightning rod for this debate: the Prime Minister’s
personal commitment not to withdraw the Winter
Fuel Payment (WFP) for pensioners. Arguably, this is

something of a distraction; while the WFP may be an
anomaly, it is very difficult to argue that over the longer
term the level of universal state provision for pensioners
has become more generous, as figure 2 shows, or that
means-testing it would make the system either ‘fairer’
or more rational (Portes, 2012). But, leaving logic aside,
what would be the distributional impact of means-testing
WFP? By definition, the impact would primarily be on
middle-income pensioners (poor pensioners would be
protected, while for richer ones WFP is not a significant
income source).
But, as figure 3 shows, middle-income pensioners have
actually already lost more from recent policy changes
than either poorer or richer ones. The chart suggests
that if the objective of policy was to smooth the burden
of deficit reduction amongst these groups (“we’re all
in this together”) by targeting a group that had got off
relatively lightly so far, the appropriate target group
would be relatively high income working households
(albeit not the very richest) without children. Ironically,
this group benefits significantly from the government’s
signature tax policy of raising the personal allowance
(Browne, 2012), suggesting that those who are critical
of the distributional impact of current policy might be
better off focusing on this policy decision rather than
that on WFP.
This analysis only looks at taxes and benefits, not at
other spending, so excludes the impact of tuition fees,
the ring-fencing of NHS spending, etc. Distributional
analyses of the impact of these measures suggest that
overall they are regressive by income (Horton and Reed,
2011); but no age-related analysis exists at present,
although it seems likely that the relative protection
afforded to health spending compared to other areas
will indeed favour older age groups, while lower income
working-age families with children will be the biggest
losers. One policy where the intergenerational impacts
have been much distorted in public debate, however, is
that of university tuition fees. In fact, taxpayer subsidies
to students have tended to rise over recent decades. What
has changed is that the subsidy is distributed over far
more students, as HE participation has tripled since the
late 1970s. The introduction of income-contingent fees –
better described as a capped graduate tax – probably does
not reduce expenditure much (the situation is obscured
by the way the government accounts for student loans)
while making the distribution of the subsidy rather more
progressive. Certainly the idea that the pre-tuition fee
regime, with far fewer students receiving higher subsidies,
and going on to receive excellent labour market returns,
was in any sense ‘fairer’ seems hard to sustain.
Portes Commentary: Intergenerational and intragenerational equity  F7
It is also important to note that the calculations described
above only represent a snapshot. Clearly protecting
pensions at the expense of working age benefits
redistributes from relatively poor people currently of
working age to pensioners in general. But those currently
of working age will eventually become pensioners; the
net impact on them will depend on the extent to which
the policy is in fact sustainable and sustained (or, put
another way, how it is financed). As Chris Dillow has
pointed out (Dillow, 2013):
“Rising pensions are better for youngsters than
oldsters. This is simply because they can look forward
to many years of rises, whilst an old person will
probably die after only a few years of getting them.
If you’re 40 years shy of pension age, a 0.5 per cent
annual real rise in the state pension increases the value
of your retirement wealth by over 25 per cent. This
is much more than an 80-year-old will get, who can
anticipate only eight years of rising pensions before
he dies.”
It follows that a government decision to implement a
more generous pension uprating policy redistributes to
the elderly only if some other assumption is made: for
example, that the policy is unsustainable and will have to
be offset in future through tax increases or spending cuts
that will fall on those now younger. In order to assess
this argument, we need to look at tax and spending over
time.
Are the young subsidising the old?
The concept of ‘intergenerational accounts’ as a means
to analyse long-term distributional consequences of
tax, transfers and public spending was developed by
Auerbach, Gokhale and Kotlikoff (1994). Generational
accounts are designed to show the net discounted
lifetime contribution, positive or negative, that people,
as a function of their age, are expected to make to
the Exchequer. This involves a number of steps: first,
calculating taxes and public spending by age groups
over time (for the past), and then projecting these
forward on some assumption about future policies.
Since the government must satisfy its intertemporal
budget constraint – the future discounted value of taxes
must equal the value of future spending plus any existing
debt – any gap that emerges from this must be filled
somehow, by adjusting future taxes or spending.
Of course, the outputs of these calculations – the degree
to which the government is redistributing income
between different generations, past, present, and future
– depend crucially on various assumptions, of two kinds:
F8 National Institute Economic Review No. 227 February 2014

Table 1. Base generational accounts for the United Kingdom, 2008 prices

£ Present 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Total Income Production Social Other Other Health Education Pensions Social Other
taxes taxes security current receipts welfare
taxes
0 68375 185937 162813 105814 28065 605 –97286 –84054 –99138 –88379 –46002
5 79151 208916 177933 118217 32206 629 –109472 –80723 –120423 –95786 –52346
10 106868 214902 177112 121688 32941 599 –108462 –64469 –120990 –94232 –52222
15 143165 222432 176536 126413 33806 568 –106613 –47106 –118940 –92011 –51921
20 157700 210679 163527 119437 32333 510 –100363 –20180 –113558 –85404 –49280
25 124486 188883 146281 105726 29869 454 –98709 –6100 –117130 –77117 –47672
30 67684 165298 132273 89908 27998 417 –101299 –3400 –125197 –70539 –47774
35 29832 140823 117553 74758 25441 376 –97370 –1990 –122741 –61130 –45889
40 –11925 116689 105451 61122 23139 343 –95838 –1312 –125064 –52625 –43829
45 –58601 92564 93644 47705 20919 313 –95601 –895 –128811 –46391 –42049
50 –105011 68902 81086 34205 18622 280 –94238 –398 –132239 –41241 –39990
55 –155058 45561 68463 20933 16455 250 –92747 –169 –139669 –36364 –37771
60 –198930 26152 55373 9814 14004 217 –88205 –96 –150746 –30645 –34799
65 –223183 14720 43770 4309 11687 187 –84436 –57 –152334 –27965 –33063
70 –206912 9827 33943 2848 9539 157 –78861 –33 –129289 –26270 –28776
75 –177732 7165 25016 2032 7438 124 –69391 –18 –103037 –23590 –23472
80 –143375 5364 17428 1530 5514 93 –58735 –9 –76743 –20782 –17038
85 –114636 3968 12206 1155 3936 69 –48766 –3 –53878 –18082 –15240
90 –86040 2997 8653 886 2851 52 –40058 –1 –37718 –14248 –9454
95 –57721 2085 5491 616 1853 35 –28216 –1 –24879 –10151 –4555
Future
Generations 159668

Source: McCarthy, Sefton and Weale (2011).

first, those that determine how large the gap that needs
to be filled is (these include demographic projections,
the definition of the ‘unchanged policy’ baseline, and
macroeconomic variables such as the growth rate and
the real interest rate) and second, how the gap is filled
(on whom does the burden of future tax or spending
changes fall).
But this in itself shows the (necessarily) somewhat
arbitrary nature of the assumptions here. Clearly there
is no set of feasible policy changes that will impose an
extra £90,000 lifetime burden on someone born next
year (‘future generations’) compared to those born last
year. Adjustment will in practice be shared between
those currently alive and future generations.

The most recent generational accounts for the UK were
produced by McCarthy, Sefton and Weale (2011) and are
reproduced here (table 1). They show net contributions/
receipts for all those now alive, assuming ‘unchanged
policy’ applies to all those currently alive; and assume
that the full burden of any necessary adjustment falls
equally on ‘future generations’.
These do indeed show a considerable degree of
intergenerational redistribution. Taken at face value, the
table suggests that those currently aged 65 will receive
£220,000 more in spending than they pay in tax, over
their lifetimes. Those just born will pay in £68,000; while
future generations will each contribute almost £160,000.
It is also worth noting that the substantial burden on
those currently young, and future generations, arises
from the calculation that current tax and spending
policies are very far from sustainable, with a projected
future gap between revenues and expenditures of about
6–6.5 per cent of GDP (in NPV terms). This is much
more pessimistic than the picture shown by the OBR’s
most recent Fiscal Sustainability Report, although the
key trends and drivers – pension and health spending
in particular – are the same (OBR, 2013). This partly
reflects recent policy changes (such as the commitment
to raise the state pension age in future, and reductions
in future public sector pensions) which will impact those
alive now as well as future generations.

A further point bearing on the ‘fairness’ issue emerges
from looking more closely at table 1. The substantial net
payment to those currently aged 65, and net contribution
from those in their twenties and thirties, emerges not
because the older generations are getting more from the
state (in pensions, health care, education and so on) – if
anything the reverse (given the rise in life expectancy,
and substantial real terms increases in health spending
over the past few decades, those who are young now
are expected to get considerably more from the state on
average than those now old). The spending reductions
now being implemented are unlikely to change that.
Instead, it is because they are expected to pay much more
in tax. And this in turn is not primarily because tax rates
have increased over the past half century or so, but rather
because the later generations have earned more (and spent
more) and will do so (assuming continued economic
growth) in the future, hence paying much more in taxes.
This also of course implies that their lifetime consumption
(taking into account both their after-tax income and their
consumption of public services) is likely to be considerably
higher than that of previous generations.
To see this in a very rough and ready way, note that the
net present value of future taxes, on unchanged policies,
for those currently aged 20 is estimated at well over £0.5
million, implying lifetime consumption (private and
public) of well over £1 million in NPV terms, even after
their net ‘contribution’ of £157,000; while those now
age 50 will pay something over £0.2 million in taxes;
even after net ‘receipts’ of about £105,000, their lifetime
consumption will be closer to £0.7 million.
So what is essentially happening here is not that the
government is deliberately favouring the currently old in
terms of public spending, but rather that the government
is redistributing some of the ‘fruits of growth’ from those
now earning and producing to those who did so in the
past. Since the growth that makes this possible relies –
both in an economic sense (investment, research, etc.)
and, more broadly, in political, institutional and moral
terms, on the contribution of previous generations – this
casts such redistribution in a somewhat different light.
Whether the level of redistribution implied by current
policies is ‘fair’ or not is obviously a subjective issue, but it
is certainly not axiomatic that government should seek to
balance generational accounts of the form shown here.
Will this generation “be the first to be
worse off than their parents”?
Perhaps the phrase that has most resonance in this debate
has been the claim that the generation currently entering
Portes Commentary: Intergenerational and intragenerational equity  F9
Figure 4. Equivalised median household income by age and
birth cohort
800
(£ per week, 2011-12 prices)
700
Real household income
600
500
400
300
200
20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
Age
1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s
Source: Hood and Joyce (2013), figure 2.3a.
the labour market will be “the first to be worse off than
their parents”. On the surface, this seems implausible:
UK GDP growth over the past half century, up to the
2008 crisis, has averaged a little over 2 per cent per
year; this has, by and large, translated into real income
growth. As Dillow (2014) points out,
“Barring an improbable disaster, today’s young people
will on average be better off than my generation on
average.”
However, a recent IFS analysis (Hood and Joyce, 2013)
suggests that there was at least some truth in this
thesis. Figure 4 shows the path of cohort incomes, and
does indeed suggest that those born in the 1970s are
doing worse at this point in their careers than earlier
cohorts.
This represents a combination of cyclical and structural
factors. Developments in the UK economy and labour
market over the past decade have clearly disadvantaged
younger generations, both in absolute and relative terms:
working-age income growth has slowed (and gone into
reverse since 2008) just at the time when, on the basis
of past experience, those in their thirties would have
expected to see rapid progression. Will this damage
prove permanent? This obviously depends on broader
F10 National Institute Economic Review No. 227 February 2014
issues, and in particular the pace of future productivity
and real wage growth. However, assuming that UK
productivity and hence output growth does return to
something approaching the historical average, it is
difficult to see that real wage growth will not eventually
follow suit.
How the fruits of this growth are distributed is a very
different matter, as the example of the US shows. The US
has averaged output and productivity growth of about 2
per cent per year over the past three decades. However,
incomes for the top 1 per cent of households nearly
quadrupled, while those for the bottom quintile grew by
only 18 per cent over the entire period (CBO, 2011). The
result was that nearly a third of all the income growth
over the period went to the top 1 per cent.
Although inequality increased in the UK in the first half
of this period (1979–95), this pattern was not replicated
in the UK in the years up to the mid-2000s (Portes,
2011), as wage growth, while favouring higher earners,
was much more evenly spread, and redistributive tax and
benefit policies, especially in the early 2000s, restrained
the rise in income inequality. However, in recent years,
UK trends have conformed more closely to the US
example. Median wages have grown significantly less
than per capita GDP (Resolution Foundation, 2013),
as an increasing proportion of the increase in average
(mean) incomes accrues to those at the top of the income
distribution. HMRC data suggest that about a quarter of
the growth in real pre-tax incomes between 1999–2000
and 2013–14 accrued to the top 1 per cent of (income)
taxpayers; almost as much as went to the bottom 50 per
cent (HMRC, 2013).
And indeed the IFS figures show a sharp rise in
intragenerational inequality. The 80–20 ratio for those
aged 40 has gone from 2.2 for those born in the 1940s,
to about 2.5 for those born in the 1950s and 1960s, and
to about 2.8 for those born in the 1970s (and again this
is likely to understate the growth in inequality at the
very top of the income distribution). By contrast, even if
we take the current data at face value, those born in the
1970s are only about 10 per cent worse off than those
born in the 1960s. So it is hardly surprising that younger
people on low and middle incomes feel that they are
doing rather badly in relative terms, but this is primarily
a result of increases in intragenerational inequality that
have hit them particularly hard. The circumstances
of your birth and early life (who your parents are,
education, gender, ability, effort and just plain luck) still
matter far more – indeed, more so than before – than
when you were born.
It is also worth noting that, just as intragenerational
inequality remains considerably more important than
intergenerational inequality, so does intragenerational
redistribution. The top decile of non-retired households
pay £30,000 more annually in taxes than they receive in
benefits and services, while the bottom decile benefit by
£10,000; while the figures are not directly comparable
to those in the generational accounts described above, it
seems clear that over a lifetime this type of redistribution
– from richer to poorer, not from younger to older
cohorts – is likely to dominate for most households.
The same is true for changes to policy: the main impact
of the government’s changes to benefits will not be to
redistribute from young to old, but from poorer to
middle-income and richer households.
Similar considerations apply to the structural changes
set out in the analysis, in particular lower levels of home
ownership and expected future pension income (both
state and private). As the IFS notes, the fact that those
now relatively old have high levels of home ownership,
and the sharp rise in house prices over the past few
decades, means that those now young and middle-
aged expect to inherit considerably more than for past
cohorts; but, unsurprisingly, “expected inheritances are
distributed unequally and are higher for those who are
already wealthier”: well over two-thirds of property
wealth belongs to the wealthiest third of the population.
And, crucially, rising property prices do not directly raise
the consumption of older cohorts unless they realise the
value of their properties via equity release or downsizing;
if they simply translate into larger inheritances, then the
redistributive impact is primarily within rather than
between generations. As Portes (2013) puts it:
“There is no doubt that rising house prices redistribute
wealth, and in a way that is regressive and damaging
both economically and socially. But the main
dimension on which this redistribution takes place is
not that of age, but of income and wealth (and to a
lesser extent geography).”
In other words, it is quite wrong to say that inequality
between cohorts makes inequalities within cohorts less
important; the opposite is the case.
Conclusion
This brief survey has attempted to show that it is possible
to look at the issue of ‘intergenerational fairness’
through a number of different lenses; this in turn means
that any conclusions are at least in part subjective.
However, the simple story of coddled pensioners and
struggling youth does not really add up: both inequality
 Portes
and redistribution within generations remains much
greater than that between generations – and its impact
is growing – while the impact of recent policy decisions
on intergenerational equity is more ambiguous than is
immediately apparent.
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