Age Bias: How government spending is skewed against the young

This report investigates government spending and age and finds that:

The gap in the amount of money the government spent on an older person compared to what it spent on a child has doubled over the past 19 years.
The government now spends around £20,800 on each pensioner and only £14,700 on each child – a £6,000 difference.
Since 2010/11, the research finds that although overall public expenditure has grown by 60% in real terms, reaching £850 billion in 2018/19, pensioners captured 30% of this growth throughout the period, rising by around £100 billion.
Twice as many children – 4.2 million – now living in poverty compared to older people, who have seen their generation’s poverty levels fall by around half.
The Triple Lock on the State Pension, introduced in 2010, and which rises by the higher of earnings, inflation or 2.5%, can explain much of the divergence in spending.
The government has spent 45% more on servicing public sector pension debt interest payments (£18 billion a year) over the previous four years than it spent on child benefit payments (£11.5 billion in 2018–19).
Pensioners have also benefited from the highest rate of growth in outpatient mental health treatment, receiving three times as much spending in 2018/19 compared to 2011/12, whereas spending on children rose by only 5.6% over the same period.