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Intergenerational Equity: Historical Reconstructions

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Challenges of Aging

Abstract

Intergenerational equity can be simply defined as the view that public resources should be allocated ‘fairly’ between competing generations. Although intergenerational tensions and conflicts are as old as human history itself, renewed concerns have emerged very recently in the UK against a background of economic recession, massive cuts in public expenditure and something of a change in the political culture. The idea that our current economic woes have in part been caused by ‘over-generous’ redistribution to older people at the expense of the young has become an integral part of prevailing political discourses, popularized by recent books (apocalyptically titled, and of varying degrees of seriousness) (Willetts, 2010; Beckett, 2010; Howker and Malik, 2010), frequently discussed in the media, the focus of a new pressure group (the Intergenerational Foundation) and even taken up by research funding bodies like the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Leverhulme Trust.

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Authors
  1. John Macnicol
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Augsburg, Germany

    Cornelius Torp

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© 2015 John Macnicol

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Macnicol, J. (2015). Intergenerational Equity: Historical Reconstructions. In: Torp, C. (eds) Challenges of Aging. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283177_12

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