Précis of Justice Across Ages

Should it concern us if young adults are more vulnerable to unemployment than those who are middle-aged?Or should it only concern us if the young are more susceptible to unemployment than those who are middle-aged were at the same age?And is mandatory retirement wrongfully discriminatory, like work discrimination based on gender and race?Or is there something special about age, such that we might be permitted to treat young and old differently with regard to access to employment opportunities?To take a different type of example: is the underrepresentation of young adults in political institutions problematic as such?Or is this trend worrying primarily when the generation's voting trend is expected to remain lower than for other cohorts as they age?In Justice Across Ages, I underscore the importance of age membership in our social fabric and for social justice.Age structures our institutions, relationships, obligations, and entitlements.There is an age for studying, one for voting, and further ages for driving, working, or retiring.Each age corresponds to specific risks and vulnerabilities.Young adults are more likely to be unemployed and far less likely to own a home than their elders.In old age, one becomes more vulnerable to disability and isolation.Inequalities between age groups are consequently numerous and multidimensional.In spite of this obvious fact, philosophers have mostly overlooked age as a source of inequality.They have spent ample time debating the right currency of egalitarian justice (resources, opportunities, primary goods, capabilities, or welfare) without paying enough direct attention to the time units to which these distributions should pertain.Justice Across Ages scrutinizes the important normative issues that arise when we look closely at these temporal issues.It offers a blueprint for distinguishing those inequalities between young and old that shouldn't bother us from those that do matter to justice.In some respects, age is special as compared to other sources of inequalities like race or gender.Age is special in that we all age (although we do not all age to the same age, or in the same way).Most of us can