Measuring Intergenerational Justice for Public Policy

We review dominant approaches to evaluate the intergenerational justice of public policies. We distinguish between justice over complete lives (for which we analyse birth cohorts) and at a given moment in time (for which we study age groups). We note that it is not prima facie problematic if at one given point in time different age groups receive an unequal treatment from the state. But if such inequalities are perpetuated across different birth cohorts over the entire life cycle, then this does point to intergenerational inequities.