Seniors are receiving three times more government money than those under 45, according to a new study, the first to tabulate total public spending by age group.

Depending on what province they live in, Canadians over 65 receive between 2.9 and 3.9 times more in social spending than those under 45, writes the report released Wednesday by Generation Squeeze, a campaign for generational equity.

“It’s certainly not surprising that we spend more on seniors,” said Paul Kershaw, a public health professor at the University of British Columbia and founder of Generation Squeeze. This, he says, is because older people require more health care spending and expect to live out their golden years without working.

“The key issue though is the relative gap in spending between age groups,” he said.

In the coming months when government budgets will be crafted and made public, Kershaw expects politicians will be maintaining or increasing spending on retirees while saying that the cupboard is bare for younger Canadians.

“When we can find (funding) for one group and not for another, we’re starting to prioritize in the world of politics in a way that we wouldn’t prioritize in our homes and our families,” he told the Star in a telephone interview.

While governments are eager to develop pharmacare, there is less appetite for child care or education, he said. “We have to find the resources in our country to adapt for younger Canada at least with the same degree of urgency that we are adapting to the aging population.”

Canada’s demographic challenges mirror those in advanced economies around the world. Aging populations will require more public money to support more pensions and health care use, all of which must be paid for by a shrinking number of working-age people.

While the Council of the Federation — made up of the country’s premiers — launched a “Task Force on Aging,” in 2014 to help plan for the future, even Statistics Canada doesn’t know how much the government is spending on different age groups.

Kershaw’s study, which combines federal and provincial spending, fills that information gap while pointing out that economic pressures now disproportionately fall on younger Canadians.

“The median Canadian in prime child rearing years earns approximately $4,500 less for full-time work than in 1976 (after adjusting for inflation), despite being twice as likely to have post-secondary, and higher student debt that results from tuitions which have doubled,” the study reads. “She or he then faces average housing prices that are nearly twice as high — $383,000 compared to $203,000 in 1976 — pushing home ownership out of reach or obliging heavy debt loads.”

Generation Squeeze isn’t trying to create generational resentment, says Kershaw, just to ensure that we understand government spending now and are able to adapt it for a sound fiscal future going forward.

“We fundamentally want to safeguard the medical care and old age security on which our aging parents and grandparents are going to depend. But we don’t know any aging parents or grandparents who want that safeguarding to come at the expense of adapting for their children and grandchildren,” he said.