Youth-ing Politics

This chapter focuses on disparities in political power between age groups. In particular, it looks at the critical underrepresentation of young adults in legislative bodies and makes the case that the introduction of youth quotas should be considered as a remedy. The defense has two parts: the first discusses the likely impact of youth quotas on the substantive representation of young adults’ interests; the other makes the case that youth quotas have symbolic value and could contribute to the affirmation of the young’s status as political equals. The chapter argues that these substantive and symbolic arguments jointly provide a good basis for a politics of youth presence in parliaments. The chapter concludes by drawing attention to the distinction between age and cohort quotas.

Lifespan Prudence

How should a just government distribute resources like jobs, education and healthcare between age groups? How should it ensure that the rules that govern entitlements and restrictions at different stages of our lives are fair rather than age-biased? This chapter answers these questions starting from Norman Daniels’s account of lifespan prudence. Daniels proposes that the unattractive allegory of a war between young and old could be undercut by the simple realization that we can all benefit from some forms of unequal treatment by age. He asks us to convert the interpersonal question into the intrapersonal question “how would an ideally placed agent behind a veil of ignorance distribute scarce resources between different stages of her own life?” This chapter offers an in-depth critical engagement with the framework and offers two resulting principles of age-group justice: lifespan sufficiency and lifespan efficiency.

Equality over Time

Age is nothing like merit and effort. We have no more control over our age than over our ethnicity, and yet others may fail to treat us as equals on that basis. At the same time, we tend to tolerate differential treatment by age more than we do for other suspect grounds. After an analysis of age discrimination compared to other cases of discrimination, this chapter proposes that this is because age is “special” in at least one morally significant way: we can expect to pass through all the categories as we age, and so inequalities between age groups can be compatible with equal treatment of persons over time. This basic fact gives traction to a dominant view on equality through time: complete lives egalitarianism. This chapter critically examines the intuitive position that we should look for evidence of inequalities over time, rather than at each time segment, to establish whether a society is fair. It also discusses the implications of complete lives egalitarianism for intergenerational justice.

Treating Young and Old as Equals

This chapter brings the whole framework developed in previous chapters together: it summarizes its key components and examines potential conflicts between the principles. The chapter then goes back to the examples of inequalities between young and old with which this book began (unequal exposure to environmental risks, unequal benefit ratios, unequal per-capita spending, unequal respect, unequal political power, and unequal labor market vulnerabilities), and offers a final take on whether (or under which conditions) they are unjust. The chapter ends with an examination of the recommendations that can be derived from the framework for what counts as treating young adults, specifically, as equals.

Introduction

Justice Across Ages is a book about how we should respond to inequalities patterned on age membership. Our social fabric is structured around age and so inequalities between age groups are numerous and multifaceted. And yet, political theorists have spared little time thinking about how we should respond to these disparities. Are they akin to those patterned on gender or race? Or is there something relevantly distinctive about them that mitigates the need for concern? This introductory chapter presents these questions and shows why they matter. It introduces the book’s main aim—developing a theory of justice between co-existing generations—and also provides an overview of the book’s approach, main contributions and structure.

Relational Equality Between Age Groups

This chapter makes the case that synchronic equality can have value beyond its derivative impact on complete-lives equality and lifespan prudence. It proposes to draw on relational egalitarianism to explain what is wrong with a variety of intuitively troubling cases of synchronic inequality. While reasons of distributive fairness naturally give traction to the diachronic approach, there is no such pull to focus on complete lives when approaching inequalities relationally. Relational reasons can thus explain our reluctance to accept some troubling cases of synchronic inequalities better than competing views. When deciding whether an inequality between young and old is acceptable, the chapter argues, their relationships should be investigated for hierarchies in status, standing, respect, and power. The synchronic relational principle proposed in this chapter illuminates important social issues that have been under-discussed by philosophers—as illustrated by the case of infantilization by age—and has important policy implications.

Basic Income versus Basic Capital

This chapter considers the egalitarian proposal of enforcing a right to unconditional cash. It discusses when the payment should be made—in a lump sum at the beginning of individuals’ adult lives (as proponents of the basic capital grant argue), or in regular installments throughout people’s adult lives (as proponents of the basic income guarantee argue). Drawing on the previously developed temporal framework, the chapter provides an original account of the values underpinning the policies. A number of claims found throughout the literature are systematized and novel arguments are added along the way. The chapter concludes both that the debate between the two policy proposals is best described as a conflict about the temporality of justice and proposes that basic income be the baseline of egalitarian unconditional cash policies. Recognizing the diachronic power of basic capital, though, the chapter ends with an original version of basic income that incorporates a baby bond.

Age, Jobs, and Inequalities

Having a job can be a burden and a benefit at once, and so we tend to treat employment as a right and a duty. The distribution of jobs is therefore a pressing matter of social justice, understood as the fair distribution of burdens and benefits of social cooperation. We are well familiar with work inequalities patterned on gender, race, immigration status, level of ability, and social class, among other. But work is also very unequally distributed between persons at different stages of their lives. This chapter applies the normative insights offered in previous chapters to the complex world of work. It seeks to identify which workplace and labor market inequalities in rights and obligations should concern us by looking at programs that enforce a special right to work for the young, a special duty to retire for senior workers, and a special duty to work for the young. The chapter also examines the phenomenon of wrongful age discrimination in employment and the notion of age-integrated workplaces.