Making sense of age-group justice

Abstract

This article brings together two debates in contemporary political philosophy: on the one hand, the dispute between the distributive and relational approaches to equality and, on the other hand, the field of intergenerational equality. I offer an original contribution to the second domain and by doing so, I inform the first. The aim of this article is thus twofold: (1) shedding some light on an under-researched and yet crucial question – ‘which inequalities between generations matter?’ and (2) contributing to a far-reaching debate that touches upon the nature of egalitarianism. After showing that there are two key problems that fall within the scope of intergenerational equality – questions of justice between age groups and questions of equality between birth cohorts – I argue that, contrary to what the default distributive view (complete lives egalitarianism) states, some inequalities between age groups matter independently of their diachronic impact, and so partly for relational reasons. I argue that, even if we are distributive egalitarians, we must endorse the relational egalitarian conception to successfully make sense of some inequalities between age groups. I infer from this both that the putative view that the ‘relational’ conception of equality can be redescribed as distributive must be rejected and that the distributive view requires supplementation (but not necessarily displacement) by the relational view.

Affirmative Action in the Political Domain

“…Bidadanure argues that:on this view [relational egalitarianism], what is problematic in our examples [examples structurally similar to the one above] 14 is precisely that these societies may not be communities of relational equals at any point . Phases of domination, marginalization, or segregation cannot be thought to cancel out diachronically (Bidadanure, 2016: 246).…”

Intergenerational Exploitation

“…For example, the baby boomers are a birth cohort of those people born between the end of the Second World War and the 1960s. The difference between age groups, on one hand, and birth cohorts, on the other, lies with the fact that ‘birth cohorts are specific groups of people who age together, while age groups are phases through which different cohorts pass as they age’ (Bidadanure, 2016: 239; see also Daniels, 1988: 13). It follows that since we all age, treating age groups unequally will not necessarily bring about inequalities between individuals; however, treating birth cohorts unequally does bring about inequalities between individuals.…”

“…To illustrate, McKerlie asks us to imagine an unequal city where elderly people live in miserable, overcrowded retirement homes with little prospect for happiness, while younger people live in lovely affluent residences. The older residents enjoyed the same happy lifestyles in their past, and the younger residents will end up in the same miserable homes themselves when they grow old (McKerlie, 2013: 6; see also Bidadanure, 2016).…”

Ageing and Terminal Illness: Problems for Rawlsian Justice

“…Some understand this concern as a worry about relative inequality at particular times; McKerlie and Temkin, for instance, both worry about societies where people's lives are roughly equal in quality, but only because they trade places between very good and very poor lives at different stages. As Bidadanure 38 notes, such a claim may also gain support from the concept of 'relational' justice, the idea that certain levels of inequality may contribute to unjust social relations between individuals.…”