Research project The Moral Demands of Equality in Aging Societies
The aim of this research project is to understand the demands of equality in aging societies raising challenges for maintaining and promoting equality between age groups and generations. This interdisciplinary research will use the results and hypotheses of demography to raise and address philosophical questions about societal aging.
The aim of this research project is to understand the demands of equality in aging societies. Aging will change substantially the age composition of the populations of developed countries, and it raises challenges for maintaining and promoting equality between age groups and generations. This interdisciplinary research will use the results and hypotheses of demography to raise and address philosophical questions about societal aging. These questions concern the stability and fairness of intergenerational cooperation, the value of longevity, and the problem of equality between age groups and generations.
The research project will examine existing theories of equality in philosophy in light of population aging and ask to what extent they must be modified in order to be applicable in the context of aging societies. It will also examine the value of longevity and its relation to theories of well-being, and develop theories for resource priority setting between age groups.
The project will result in around a dozen philosophical papers on the topics of intergenerational cooperation, longevity and well-being, and equality between age groups and generations. These papers will form the backbone of a monograph, to be completed in draft form by the end of the project.
Aging is an enormous challenge in developed countries, and it raises inescapable ethical questions. The research has direct practical relevance to one of the most important social problems of the near future.
Project description
Purpose and Aims
The aim of this research project is to explore the philosophical implications of population aging—in particular, the ethical and policy challenges faced by aging societies. These societies are characterized by a combination of low mortality rates and low birth rates, resulting in rapidly aging populations. All developed countries, including Sweden and its Nordic neighbors, belong to this group. It is widely recognized that the changing age composition of their populations will present them with unprecedented challenges in the coming decades: maintaining economic growth, adjusting their social policies, preserving their social welfare system.
One of the most important challenges, however, concerns equality. How will aging societies be able to maintain equality throughout the
lifetime between different age groups and successive generations in the face of enormous demographic change? More generally, how should we understand the demands of equality in the context of aging societies? As demographers put it, developed countries are at the late stages of the demographic transition. This transition started in Western and Northern Europe in the late 18th–early 19th century. First, infant and child mortality fell, followed by the gradual decrease in late-life mortality, leading to rapid population growth and increasing life expectancies.
At the same time, however, fertility rates also began to decrease and they eventually fell below replacement rates, resulting in smaller and even shrinking populations and a relative increase in the number of older people. The transition was completed by the end of the 20th century. Today, as late-life mortality continues to decrease, these trends are creating societies with a relatively large and growing elderly population and smaller and contracting younger populations. It is expected that developed countries will experience continuing and even accelerating aging in the coming decades. Thus, an ever larger share of the population will consist of elderly people.
Project members
Project managers
Greg Bognar
Professor
