VID Colloquium
Measuring Intergenerational Justice in Aging Societies
Pieter Vanhuysse, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research
Date: Wed, 13 Mar. 2013, Time: 4:00-5:00 pm
Population aging has led to a renewed popular and theoretical interest in the notion of justice between the generations. But efforts to measure intergenerational justice in practice have lagged behind. I propose a snapshot synthetic measure for 31 OECD countries around 2010. Sustainability is the underlying notion: ‘enough and as good’ ought to be left by each generation for the next. The measure is composed of four dimensions, three of which capture policy outcomes that leave legacy burdens towards future generations, and one of which captures policy spending efforts towards different age groups. These dimensions are aggregated into a synthetic intergenerational justice value per country, using a benefit-of-the-doubt weighting method that respects the (revealed) preferences of democratically elected governments. I discuss cross-national results and conclude with a number of policy conclusions for boosting intergenerational justice, notably early childhood investment on the supply side and Demeny votes on the demand side.
About the presenter:
Pieter Vanhuysse is Head of Research and Deputy Director at the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Vienna. Previously he has been Assistant Professor in Politics and Policy at the University of Haifa and Fellow at Collegium Budapest/Institute for Advanced Study. Dr Vanhuysse has studied economics at the University of Leuven and politics and political economy at the London School of Economics. He does research on the political sociology of public policies and welfare states, intergenerational policy conflict, and population aging. He has published over thirty articles in journals such as West European Politics, Public Choice, Political Studies, Social Policy & Administration, Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of Social Policy and Journal of Public Policy. He has co-edited Post-Communist Welfare Pathways (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Ageing Populations in Post-Industrial Democracies: Comparative Studies of Policies and Politics (Routledge/ECPR European Political Science Series, 2012) and has authored Divide and Pacify (CEU Press, 2006), which was nominated for the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award for Political Sociology.