Importantly, however, most of this expanded spending represents the growth of middle-class entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.105 The big beneficiaries of these growing transfer programs have been older Americans in the middle 40 percent of the income distribution, not the bottom 50 percent. That spending (in effect, transferring money from younger people to older people) has made the age distribution of income more egalitarian, mostly ending the scourge of elderly poverty
