Mobilising alternative futures

Generational accounting and the fiscal politics of ageing in Australia

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11199751
AutoresBen Spies-Butcher (0000-0002-0427-5082, Macquarie University, autor de correspondencia), Adam Stebbing (0000-0003-3476-2436, Macquarie University)
Año2019
Volumen39
Número7
Páginas1409-1435
Fecha de publicación2019-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAgeing and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0144-686X • E-ISSN: 1469-1779
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0144686x18000028
OpenAlexW2791987345
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas44

Economists typically argue population ageing generates fiscal pressures by restricting the tax base while increasing demands for social spending. Alongside other economic pressures associated with neoliberalism, this dynamic contributes to a politics of ‘enduring austerity’ that limits governments’ fiscal discretion. The politics of population ageing reflects modelling techniques, such as generational accounting (GA), which, anticipating future deficits, create demands for policy action today to address projected intergenerational inequalities. Taking Australia as a case study, this paper explores the politics of GA in public budgetary processes. While existing critiques reject GA by arguing it relies on ‘apocalyptic’ or unreliable demography, we focus on a different kind of contestation, which applies the techniques and even the categories of GA to frame different problems and promote different solutions. We identify three sites of partisan contest that refocus fiscal modelling: including the tax side of the budget equation; comparing the cost of public provision to public subsidies for private programmes; and including the costs of environmental damage. At each site, the future-orientated logic of GA is mobilised to contest the policy implications of austerity. This complicates analysis that financialisation and neoliberalism necessarily ‘de-politicise’ policy by removing state discretion. Instead, we identify an increasingly important, if technocratic, form of political contestation that offers the possibility to promote more egalitarian responses to population ageing

Austerity · CONTEST · Discretion · Economics · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Population ageing · Public economics · Sociology · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Social Policy and Reform Studies