Implicit debt (in government debt)
Government "implicit" debt is the "promise" by a government of future payments from the state. Usually long term promises of social payments such as pensions and health expenditure are what is referred to by this term; not promises of other expenditure such as education or defence (which are largely paid on a "quid pro quo" basis to government employees and contractors, rather than as "social welfare", including welfare per se, to the general population).
The problem with the implicit government insurance liabilities is that it's very hard to make any accurate assumptions about these liabilities, since the scale of future payments depends on so many factors. First of all, the social security claims are not any "open"bonds or debt papers with a stated time frame, "time to maturity", "nominal value", or "net present value". In the United States there is no money in the governments coffers for social insurance payments, or for any payments, more than what's required to run day-to-day business. This insurance system is called PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) as opposed to save and invest. The fear is that when the "baby boomers" start to retire the working population in the United States will be a smaller percentage of the population than it is now, for a perhaps incalculable time into the future. This will make the government expenditures a "burden" on the country - larger than the 35% of GDP that it is now. Remember that the "burden" of the government is what it spends, since it can only pay its bills through taxes, debt, and inflation of the currency (government spending = tax revenues + change in government debt held by public + change in monetary base held by the public). "Government social benefits" paid by the United States government during 2003 totalled $1.3 trillion. [1]
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