Population Aging and Distributive Justice

Daniel Halliday (University of Melbourne)

In-Person Seminar with Daniel Halliday

Location and Date: Utrecht University, Dept of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Janskerkhof 13, Room 0.06. Tuesday 29 April: 15.30 – 17.00. No registration required.

Inquiries: [email protected]

Population Aging and Distributive Justice

All developed societies show a robust trend of demographic aging. Important subsidiary trends are increased average (albeit unequal) longevity, falling birth rates, and a tendency for people to have children later in life. The significance of such trends for distributive justice is considerable, as reflected by some recently emerging literature around specific issues, like retirement justice.

But the significance of population aging is quite comprehensive. What’s needed from political philosophy are accordingly comprehensive principles that govern the distribution of benefits and burdens between birth cohorts. Here I identify three core considerations that must guide the formulation of any broader principles for inter-cohort justice in aging societies. These are: (1) An increased asymmetry between cohort size and the degree to which cohorts fund versus consume state services, such that younger cohorts pay for older ones; (2) The smaller size of younger cohorts is in some sense the (collective) failure of older cohorts to replace themselves through sufficient procreation; (3) the process of demographic aging couniting as a transition to a more sustainable level of population, where eventual benefits need to be weighed against substantial costs of transition.  

I will aim to develop some general principles that combine sensitivity to each of these factors in a plausible way. I will then try to sketch some implications, particularly with regard to the future of work and tax justice.

Daniel Halliday is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and for the 2024-25 academic year a Fellow at the New Institute in Hamburg. He obtained his PhD in Philosophy from Stanford University in 2011. Daniel specializes in political philosophy, with a particular focus on markets and various aspects of economic justice. He is the author of the books The Ethics of Capitalism (2020), co-authored with John Thrasher, and The Inheritance of Wealth: Justice, Equality, and The Right to Bequeath (2018), both published by Oxford University Press. He is currently working on a book exploring the morality of credit markets and related issues, with Marco Meyer, along with various papers focusing on topics to do with population aging and labour markets.