Yep, I think senior discounts are partly/largely about willingness to pay, not ability to pay. For example, senior citizens aren't the target demographic for most movies. Theaters get full freight from the 18-45 crowd, who want to see the movies the most. Then they entice senior citizens to come watch movies that they don't love by giving them better pricing.

Same applies for theme parks, where the target audience is young adults and families with small kids.

I'm not defending any of this — just pointing out that price discrimination is sometimes about ATP, and sometimes about WTP.

Senior discounts are also used to smooth out/move usage.

"Seniors pay 20% less for movie tickets at Tuesday at 1 pm" sells tickets that few people with jobs would buy, regardless of price.

The deal with being a senior, your net worth is falling, not rising. You basically have whatever you earned and saved before 65 plus some social security. Somebody who is only worth only $300k at 70 and is pretty healthy is in a lot of trouble if they live to be 85. Some better social safety nets would make this less of a concern, but we really don’t have those.