Who Will Pay?: Coping with Aging Societies, Climate Change, and Other Long-term Fiscal Challenges - Softcover

Policymakers face a number of profound developments in the world economy whose significance is certain to increase over coming years, such as demographic changes and an ageing population, climate change and the scarcity of natural resources, rapid technological change, globalisation, the growing divergence in the wealth of developed and developing countries, and geopolitical aspects such as global terrorism. This book examines the long-term fiscal planning implications of these factors for managing public sector budgets and highlights the fact that governments need to enact policy changes now in order to take account of the long term challenges involved.

Aging populations. Weather shocks. Scarce water. Globalization. Security threats. Policymakers today confront a number of developments that threaten to burden public budgets for decades to come, or bankrupt some entirely. The book argues that governments need to make policy changes now to take account of the potential fiscal consequences of these developments. After describing how analysts, national governments, and international organizations currently address, if at all, these long-term issues, the book stresses the vital need for a multi-pronged approach, involving strengthened analyses, greater attention to long-term issues and risk factors in budgeting, and institutional reforms that address the myopic biases of politicians and the public.