A discussion of children’s issues was about the last thing we expected at a retirement seminar. But Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says America can’t address the concerns of the older generation without affecting the youngest generation, too:

It’s children who are going to have to pay the bills for the retired. … We have made commitments to the elderly, through Social Security and Medicare, that are becoming unaffordable. Even maintaining current commitments to the elderly is not affordable, especially not if you think we also shoulid be investing more in younger Americans.

In fact, Sawhill thinks we do need to find more money for education and children’s healthcare, although she doesn’t want to create intergenerational warfare. She notes that the U.S. ranks 18th among 21 developed nations on a UNICEF measure of children’s well-being. She argues that, as we address huge problems like health care, Social Security, Medicare and the federal budget deficit, we need to create a new social contract between the generations.

In her presentation to our National Press Foundation seminar, Sawhill didn’t discuss specific sacrifices that the older generation needs to make, but clearly she was talking about less generous benefits for future retirees. (People close to retirement age, she emphasized, shouldn’t be asked to make sacrifices.) She is talking about a gradual increase in the standard retirement age, and a reduction in the growth rate of future benefits:

Tomorrow’s elderly would get just as much as today’s elderly, adjusting for inflation. They just wouldn’t benefit from growth in those benefits.

Policymakers must get over the idea that retirees can’t afford any sacrifice. As the Baby Boom generation hits retirement age, she said, we need to revise our stereotype of the elderly as the poorest Americans:

Don’t think today’s elderly are the same as tomorrow’s elderly. Tomorrow’s elderly are going to be more affluent.

We also got a chance to hear from AARP, the powerful membership group that lobbies on retiree issues. When I asked Jean Setzfand, AARP’s director of financial security, about Sawhill’s notion of a new intergenerational compact, here’s how she responded:

We’re at the table on all of these issues, especially with health care. The cost has to be borne by all generations, … not just this current generation (of retirees) and not just future generations.

 It’s good to hear that AARP is willing to discuss these issues. There isn’t, of course, any comparably powerful group to represent the interests of the youngest Americans.