The Office for Budget Responsibility put out its annual Fiscal Sustainabilty report yesterday. It’s got three graphs which are a wee bit scary.
Here’s the first graph, showing what proportion of taxes paid and state services used comes from which age group:
Speaks for itself, really. We rely heavily on the middle-aged for taxes, and spend heavily on early and later years. Look in particular at the pink lines – that’s health and long term care. Now look at graph number two:
Spot where the growth is. Note the percentages are the average increases each and every year, for the next 50 years. Put the two graphs together and you get graph number three:
Decoded from OBR-speak, that’s a yawning budget deficit and an increasing national debt. Summarising its projections, the OBR says:
The main lesson of our analysis is that future governments are likely to have to undertake some additional fiscal tightening beyond the current consolidation plan for the next five years in order to address the fiscal costs of an ageing population and perhaps upward pressures on health spending.
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