Leader: Anna Elisabetta Galeotti (UPO); Other collaborator(s): UNISR
This study will deal with the just distribution of resources among generations, included future ones. An aging society becomes especially sensitive to the social and political demands of an increasingly majoritarian elderly faction, with the consequent distributive unbalance among living generations, while few social resources are reserved to and invested in future generations. A paradigmatic example is climate change: on average the sensitivity to the survival of the planet decreases with age. A key normative question is thus how much sacrifice older people should make to their current living standards to promote distributive justice between living and future generations.
Brief description of the activities and of the intermediate results:
November 2023-March 2024. In this period the work focused on the construction of the Intergenerational Equity Index, together with Task 1 and with the Spoke 7 leader. An intermediate result of this work is the presentation of the paper for the Venice Conference. Our group has contributed to the work by laying down the theoretical and normative structure of the Index, discussing whether the comparison should concern cohorts or age groups, in relation to the three different dimensions of justice that we have distinguished (distributive, status equality and political equality). Moreover our group, has singled out the indicators relative to discrimination-exclusion and ecological justice. Our group, together with task 1, organized the international workshop "Just Aging" held in Vercelli on December 10-11 2023, whose papers will be shortly submitted as a special issue at an international Journal (CRISSP). Other presentations were delivered as uploaded in the repository.
The main work has concerned the construction of the Index of intergenerational equity together with Task 1 and with WP4. The contribution of Task 3 concerns the normative analysis of justice, and has been focused on a series of theoretical issues such as whether the analytical units of justice across generations are birth cohorts or age-groups; the pros and cons of the whole life perspective, the issue of differential longevity and the interconnection between fair distribution and social status.
More specifically Elisabetta Galeotti has been working on the general framework of intergenerational justice, and she will write the Introduction at the special Issue of CRISSP, edited with E.Biale. Carlo Burelli has been working on the issue of status equality, discrimination and isolation, in the context of the construction of the Index, Davide Pala has been working on the issue of climate change in the context of the Index and on the general issue of what we owe to future generations.
Elisabetta Galeotti gave a talk on “Justice across Generation in an Aging Society” on October 10 at LUISS University. Now she is completing a paper, “Justice between Co-Existing Generations: Birth Cohorts or Age-Groups?, which will be presented on February 14 at a conference on “Age, justice and Reciprocity” in Rome (LUISS University). She is editing the special issue “Just aging” for Crissp (with Enrico Biale). Davide Pala co-organized the international conference "Age, Race, Gender, and Class: Understanding Intersecting Injustices," which took place in Vercelli on January 16 and 17. Cristobal Ruiz- Tagle Coloma and Carlo Burelli have been working at the output of month 24, namely the dataset and meta-dataset concerning ageism and intergenerational justice, including the data that had been collected last year by Scott Williamson for a survey on ageism.
Papers presented in the last three months: