Justice between the Young and the Old

Justice between the Young and the Old

By Dennis McKerlie

Oxford University Press: 2013

240pp (hb)

ISBN 978–0–19–976913–1

RRP: £40.00

Currently matters of health and social care, recession and the ageing population seem to dominate headlines. Trying to do more with less is an ongoing aim of public policy, yet trying to do this in a way that is fair is a more difficult task. Thus, developing our thinking around the question of justice is vitally important and deserves our long term attention and thought. In his new book Dennis McKerlie, a scholar who has devoted three decades to this topic, explores justice between age–groups with the aim of developing a new theory of justice which can help guide and inform debate in this arena and ultimately help form new solutions to the problems we face.

McKerlie is to be praised for championing the importance of intergenerational justice through such a compelling and illuminating thesis. While he may over play the justice card as being the sole solution to the problem, he sets out a robust and comprehensive case for the need to engage with the question of how the distribution of goods over time and between generations takes place.  Fair and just decision making is something that we all probably hold with high regard and yet, surprisingly, it is not an issue that has been paid much attention by moral philosophers.

Beneficence and justice

McKerlie sets out in his book a view of fairness between age groups that applies the egalitarian values of equality, or priority for the badly off, to temporal parts of our lives and not just to complete lives. Put simply his thesis is framed by two meta–themes: beneficence and justice. Whether its care for the elderly, access to incapacity benefits or medical care, the question is whether or not the case for older people to partake of these “benefits” in order to maintain a decent standard of living is built on beneficence or justice (a sense that their rights are in some way being infringed if they do not have these benefits).  

The book comprises nine chapters (including the Conclusion) and stands as a tour de force, analysing the various theories of justice, examining their relative strengths and weaknesses and bringing to bare illuminating and creative thinking to matters facing contemporary society. While the book will more readily appeal to moral philosophers and ethicists, the book has a valuable contribution to make across the disciplines and would be of interest to those engaged in political and social science. The style of the book is relatively easy to engage with but is clearly a scholarly text. Consequently those coming to the book without grounding in basic philosophical terminology may need to engage in some further reading in order to get the most out of it.

‘Complete’ lives

McKerlie’s starting point is to tackle the question of whether or not justice between age groups has to be grounded in some egalitarian theory.  In his characteristically systematic way, he works through a detailed response to the question of why we should believe that the present unhappiness of the elderly is a justice–based concern, if those who are now young will experience similar unhappiness in their final years and if those who are now elderly were themselves happy in their youth. In other words, we will all experience the same kind of unhappiness during the course of our lives, so on that basis it is fair. But this kind of argument is based on the unit of analysis for the equality of well–being taking the form of complete lives. McKerlie asserts that most established egalitarian theories do just that, as opposed to “temporal stages in lives or related to how individuals are faring at particular times during their lives”. He therefore moves on to critique and argue that ‘complete lives egalitarianism’ has limited value in terms of forming a framework for handling justice between the young and the old.

Equality

The contradictory nature of assuming that a theory based on complete lives has to be grounded in egalitarianism becomes the next focus of the book. In chapter 4, ‘Equality’, he posits that equality can be may be measured in three ways. First, as ‘complete lives’ – as has already been mentioned; second, by comparing different age groups at the same point in time, which the author refers to as ‘simultaneous segments’; third, ‘corresponding segments’ whereby a comparison is made between the same age groups but in chronological order. Thus those who are over–65 today are compared with those who were over–65 forty years ago, or will be over–65 in forty years time in the future.  Setting out a clear model on which to base his case, McKerlie proceeds to demonstrate how redistribution in order to promote greater equality in any one of the three measures can reduce equality in one or both of the other dimensions.

In no way should it be applied that McKerlie does not support egalitarianism; this is neither the impression nor understanding that this reviewer understands the author to hold. Nevertheless, McKerlie convincingly demonstrates the inadequacy of it in terms of a framework for justice between age groups. In order to rectify this inadequacy, he proposes the idea of prioritarianism (chapter 5), a term which he acknowledges other philosophers such as Parfitt and Temkin have developed. The thinking behind prioritarianism is that equality is “a relative value while priority is an absolute value”.   Consequently, an individual should not be considered poor as a result of a comparison relative to another, but considered absolutely poor in some other respect, thus resulting in society considering a transfer of help and benefit to that individual as being of more value than to another. This contrasts with John Rawls theory of justice, whereby in a society where for example, there are those engaged in full time employment, own their own home and have sufficient food to eat, alongside those who have access to none of these goods,  the basis upon which those who are considered ‘worst off’ is made by comparison with the other. Conversely, under prioritarianism, the ‘worst off’ are those who are most badly off compared to how they might fair under a different system of distribution.

While McKerlie makes a compelling case for the incorporation of prioritarianism for justice between age groups, the fact is that it does not apply specifically to age groups. This he appears to acknowledge (pp. 115–116) –  “The ideas that I have used to explain justice between the young and the old do not apply exclusively to people of different ages and they are not rooted in the characteristic differences between youth and old age as distinctive stages of life . . .”. Thus he appears to imply the reasoning that demographic change is constantly evolving and that at particular points in time the public discourse on how best to meet the needs of a significantly ageing population becomes more pronounced. The current situation we find ourselves in the UK could be offered as a good example of this.

Is justice the only answer?

The other general question to be posed in response to McKerlie’s book is why attempts should be made to a find a solution to the issue of benefits and well being between different age groups by way of a theory of justice vis–à–vis any other concept? At points the authors argues that failure to do address the great suffering points to an infringement of rights. Having dismissed the ideas of rights, or contractarianism, in the opening chapters of the book it proves difficult to try and work out upon what basis the author is presuming these rights are derived.

This issues points to the need to ensure this kind of debate is held within a multidisciplinary context. McKerlie’s book provokes and stimulates, bringing to the discussion surrounding the distribution of good and intergenerational justice, an articulate case for the importance of justice, supported by many years of study and research. Nevertheless, it does not offer a complete picture and requires the input of other moral philosophers to help enrich and develop it further. For instance, the issue of how an individual’s perspective and set of values may change and develop over time requires further attention.

Conclusion

A select committee of the House of Lords in the UK published a report in March 2013 entitled “Ready for Ageing?”. One of the key conclusions the committee came to was that the UK was “woefully under prepared” to deal with the implications of a rapidly ageing population and to harness the benefits that such a situation could afford society. Just these observations point to the need to engage with renewed rigour and determination with the questions presented by an ageing population and the subsequent impact this has between the generations. In this regard, Justice between the Young and the Old offers some invaluable and illuminating perspectives and ideas.  

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