Bigger bill ahead for care of elderly Working age households face an even larger burden of supporting pensioners than previously expected, even though pensioners have seen the largest rise in living standards of any group in society, according to three independent reports published on Tuesday. Local councils are warning that compulsory care for rising numbers of infirm elderly residents will result in effective cuts of 90 per cent on services including libraries, roads and parks by 2020, unless their burden of social care costs is lifted. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that if the government accepts the Dilnot proposals for funding social care for the elderly, it would represent a further transfer of resources to pensioners, whose incomes "on average have risen faster than those of the rest of the population." Finally, the Intergenerational Foundation's "fairness index," shows that since 2008, the burden being placed on younger generations has been rising at a much faster than average rate, primarily because of rapid increases in government borrowing. The findings of all three studies show the increasing pressures on working age household incomes to support the incomes and care of the elderly at a time when pensioner incomes have been rising much faster than younger families" wages. IFS figures show that in the 1960s and 1970s middle-income pensioners had among the lowest income levels in society and only about a quarter of the population had lower incomes than the median (middle) pensioner. Now far more, around 40 per cent of working-age households have worse living standards than that average pensioner. Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, said that if the government were to accept the Dilnot social care recommendations that provide more state supported care for the elderly, within a coherent tax strategy "there are ways of raising money to pay for the changes from relatively well off pensioners, the group which will benefit most from the proposals." Even so, the Local Government Association warns that with cash-limited budgets, even the current, less generous system would result in councils having to devote almost all their current budgets to social care as costs rise. "Without money and reform there is no solution," it said. We do not believe that this or any government would deliberately choose to do without filling potholes, funding the voluntary sector, commissioning public libraries or planning for economic development. Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston MIT and the creator of intergenerational accounting at the World Bank in the 1990s, said the Intergenerational Foundation's index made it "vividly clear that the UK is failing its young."