ABSTRACT
America is moving toward an era when declining proportions of working-age adults will be expected to provide goods, health care, and other services to increasing numbers of elderly adults, who are seventy-five, eight-five years old, and older. It is increasingly being recognized that the old-age security and health system is actually a tax on the working generation to help those who are currently elderly: there is no real trust fund or pool of accrued premiums. The nonworking elderly survive largely on the economic surplus produced by the working population. Strictly speaking, the working population need only produce enough goods and services to keep itself alive. The middle generation will always choose to assist the elderly, in the interest of earning its entitlement to assistance when it ages. Even such self-interested generosity must meet the criterion for reciprocity.
