Many scholars and policymakers see rising debt burdens in the industrialised world as the product of ageing populations. Prominent theoretical models of government debt accumulation – used to justify fiscal rules and austerity measures – explicitly assume that support for debt reduction decreases with age. While such models have been influential, the fundamental relationship between age and preferences for debt has not been tested empirically. We test this argument but further theorise that the relationship between age and debt preferences is non‐linear. While the elderly have a clear preference for ignoring debt burdens, we add that the young should also prefer to delay reckoning with high national debts given their low income and expectations of higher future earnings. Using survey data (N = 112,689), we find that age does have a small to modest non‐linear impact on concern for national deficits and debt burdens. Middle‐aged respondents are most concerned about debt reduction, while the young and old view reducing government debt as less of a policy priority. Notably, the relationship is strongest in countries with more generous old‐age benefits.

This article analyzes the history of the Chilean personal income tax (PIT) to explain the persistence of a class-based and progressive PIT within a context of a regressive fiscal system. We provide new archival evidence regarding fiscal politics since the nineteenth century to estimate the generalization of the PIT between 1925 and 2014. Combining statistical information and parliamentary records, we follow the PIT’s trajectory in relation to elites’ self-interest, paternalistic understandings of the fiscal pact and citizenship, and the looming presence of natural resources. By keeping the PIT class-based, allegedly to protect workers, fiscal politics defined citizenship through expenditure instead of taxation. Those excluded from income taxation bear the brunt of indirect taxes—which support social spending—albeit without voice over fiscal policies.