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This chapter examines the impact of ageing societies on families based on empirical evidence from Europe, North America, and Australasia. It identifies three broad roles for families: as mechanisms for intergenerational support, intergenerational transfer, and intergenerational solidarity. It argues that more heterogeneous forms of family are emerging, with their own sets of roles and relationships influenced by demographic, social, and cultural changes.

Intergenerational tension and solidarity has been present in American family structures even before the Civil War. Kin ties remain transient and malleable. Americans still act as if they believe that they are part of one happy family, with many pretending to believe that blood is thicker than water. This chapter begins with a discussion on the history of the American family. It highlights developments that have altered the context in which general relations develop, and reviews some consequences of population ageing on domestic politics.

There has been a progressive opening up in the mobility regime in France from the start of the seventies. It is apparent in both men’s mobility and women’s mobility, is also revealed by an analysis of ‘complete’ mobility tables, and is scarcely sensitive to the treatment of unemployed and retired persons in the analysis, or to the detail of the class schema. This opening up resulted from a decline in the hierarchical divisions within the class structure and from a reduced distance between the agricultural classes and the others. Finally, introducing education between class origin and class destination reveals that the opening up of the mobility regime resulted from three components: a decrease in inequality of educational opportunity, a weakening in the relative occupational advantage afforded by education, and a compositional effect (educational expansion increased the size of more qualified groups in which the direct effect of origin on destination is generally weaker).

This chapter examines the extension of egalitarian justice theory to relations between generations (or intergenerational justice), as climate change likewise has effects upon future generations that are regarded as giving rise to claims of intergenerational justice. Two main challenges to this extension of justice principles are considered: the problems associated with the difficulty in using egalitarian principles to make interpersonal comparisons among non-contemporaries, and the fact that it is apparently impossible for current policy decisions to harm specific persons in the future, given what Parfit terms the non-identity problem. It defends a foundation for obligations to futurity by appealing to the idea of foresight, which allows persons to reasonably predict the future effects of current actions, and thereby to account for them ethically.

One subsidiary aim of this book is to motivate a return to Consequentialism in political philosophy by highlighting its comparative advantage over its main contemporary liberal rival in the area of intergenerational justice: the Contract Theory. It explores both the contractarianism of David Gauthier and the liberal egalitarianism of John Rawls, who represent two general alternatives to the strategy of building political theory on a Consequentialist account of individual morality. This chapter presents new objections to both Gauthier and Rawls, based on their inability to do justice to basic needs in an intergenerational context.

This chapter begins with a basic list of intuitively plausible principles of intergenerational justice, against which Rule Consequentialism can be measured. It then establishes the Rule Consequentialist commitment to political liberty and shows how that commitment is strengthened in the intergenerational case. It is shown that Rule Consequentialism copes with the possibility of future declines in aggregate well-being much better than its opponents, such as Rawls’s liberalism. This is illustrated using the current dispute between growth optimists and ecological pessimists.

This chapter and the previous one revisit the political economy within which post‐war welfare regimes emerged, matured, and, now appear crisis‐ridden. Here, an analysis is made of social risks and welfare states. The post‐war welfare state was premised upon assumptions about family structure and labour market behaviour that, today, are largely invalid. Risks that in the 1950s or 1960s were assumed away are now becoming dominant, and vice versa. The post‐war welfare state being the child of the 1930s Depression and the ‘workers question’, was moulded on a society in which the prototypical client was a male production worker, who is now rather hard to find. A first step towards an understanding of the contemporary welfare state crisis must begin with: (a) a diagnosis of the changing distribution and intensity of social risks, and (b) a comprehensive examination of how risks are pooled and distributed between state, market, and family. The different sections of the chapter are: The State in the Welfare Nexus—the misunderstood family, and the welfare triad of state, market, and family; The Foundations of Welfare Regimes: Risk Management—family and market ‘failures’; and The distribution of risks and models of solidarity—class risks, life‐course risks, intergenerational risks, de‐commodification, and familialism and de‐familialism.

The key issues addressed in this chapter are how to manage the transition to pension reform in Europe so as to satisfy principles of intergenerational equality and intra‐generational justice, while also contributing to the further democratization of retirement among men and women that has already started. The main sections of the chapter are: Managing the transition; The economics of ageing; Redesigning the retirement contract.

Examines symbolic ethnic politics: the politics of place names, group names, national symbols, official apologies, and other matters that do not affect the rights or resources of any particular persons. Such symbolism is important in ethnic politics, and a theory with nothing to say about it is unsatisfactory. Disputes over symbolic issues, however, are poorly suited to compromise and easily escalate into rallying points for wider conflicts. In addition, it is often impossible to meet the symbolic demands of all groups simultaneously. The chief constraint on symbolic politics should be non‐humiliation and the avoidance of the celebration of past injustices and violence, a standard that can be met for all groups simultaneously. Official apologies in particular are considered at length; they are defended against the charges of collective guilt and anachronism, but are found to be limited by considerations including the passage of time and institutional discontinuities.

This chapter examines the impact of inheritance on intergenerational relationships in the UK. There is little evidence to suggest that intergenerational relations are changing because more people have acquired significant assets to bequeath, or that children have ‘rights’ over their parents’ property. However, there is a clear distinction between ‘being given’ something and ‘having the right’ to it.

This brief conclusion summarizes the argument of the book and comments on the current political context. This chapter also discusses intentional climate change and intergenerational ethics. It looks at the research only argument, stalking horse argument, and the arm the future argument. It examines in addition types of evil, tragic choices, marring, Sophie's Choice, and shadow solutions.

We live in a “brave new world” in which allocative decisions on public goods today can have consequences that cross political and generational boundaries. Although the international aspects of public goods have received much attention in recent years, particularly with respect to environmental activities, intergenerational public goods have received relatively scant attention.

In response, this chapter has five main purposes. First, it presents a taxonomy of public goods with benefits spanning generational or national boundaries. Second, it describes the implications for economic efficiency of a variety of public goods that affect nations or generations. Third, it explores the strategic aspects of intergenerational public goods. Fourth, it offers design principles for institutional arrangements, intended to address concerns about the allocation of transgenerational public goods. Fifth, the analysis is applied to specific cases of intergenerational public goods throughout. A number of policy insights derive from this analysis. At the national level, decision‐makers are unlikely to achieve optimal levels of these public goods. If intergenerational awareness of public goods spillovers is only encouraged within a country, then that country's well‐being may actually deteriorate as others free ride on its enhanced far‐sightedness. Thus, cooperation and increased awareness of spillovers must have both an international and an intergenerational dimension for all nations to gain.

This chapter outlines and defends a conception of social justice as minimizing domination. Justice as minimizing domination is favorably contrasted with utilitarian and Rawlsian liberal‐contractualist theories. Justice obligations to future generations are also considered.

This chapter discusses intergenerational class mobility, which is the extent to which sons — and even daughters — follow in their father's footsteps. It asks how ‘open’ India is, and whether it is becoming more ‘open’ with greater equality of opportunity as it slowly modernises. The discussion is limited to the patterns of intergenerational mobility of men and women who are actually in paid employment.