"Economics labeling problem," as Kotlikoff calls it, has led to gross misreadings of the fiscal positions of different countries.
This starts with the United States, which has a relatively small debt-to-GDP ratio, but is, arguably, in worse fiscal shape than any developed country.
In 1991, Kotlikoff, together with Alan Auerbach and Jagadeesh Gokhale, produced the first set of generational accounts for the United States.
Aggregating these remaining lifetime net tax payments of adults and subtracting them from the fiscal gap reveals how much today's and tomorrow's children must pay to resolve the country's fiscal gap if current adults don't pay more, on net.
This residual burden facing today's and tomorrow's children is allocated to them in proportion to their projected levels of lifetime labor income.
Some commentators believe the government faces no intertemporal budget, which is the foundation of the fiscal gap and generational accounting frameworks.