Financing Young and Old Dependents: The Case of Indian Public Policy

Young dependent under 15 years have support of their LCD both from the public and private transfers but the magnitude of from private transfer is more than five times than that from public transfers. Public current transfer to young dependents is 10.4 times the transfers to old dependents. On the other hand old dependents in 60 plus do not get support from intra-household transfers though they have net gain from public transfers and inter-household transfers. It is noted that old dependents have to rely on asset-based reallocations to support LCD.
The totality of public current transfers (education, health and others), in kind transfers and social benefit transfers not in kind is Rs. 558953 crores and the corresponding share of these transfers are 18.8, 24.1 and 57.1 per cents respectively. The revenue of government from income, wealth and corporation taxes, indirect tax, other current transfers and public deficit transfers constitute 24.9, 49, 3.7 and 22.4 percents of the total collection of Rs. 558953 crores. In constant 2004 Indian Rupees (INR), the ratio of public transfer receipts to transfer payments shall decline from 1.07 in 2004 to 0.98 in 2051 and during this period ratio net gain of young and old dependents to the net gain of working age population from public transfers decreases from 1.56 to 0.84.