Many government programmes transfer resources between different population groups. Programmes to provide retirement and health security levy taxes on workers to finance transfers to retirees. Initiating or expanding such programmes often redistributes wealth across generations by altering their lifetime tax burdens. Although standard budget measures such as national debt and deficits do not fully reflect them, such public intergenerational redistributions could substantially affect different generations' economic choices. Generational accounting measures the size of prospective net tax burdens facing different generations under current government tax and expenditure policies. It also analyses how those fiscal burdens would change under alternative policies.