Uploaded by Paul Crew

EBook For Ageing without Ageism Conceptual Puzzles and Policy Proposals 1st Edition By Greg Bognar , Axel Gosseries

advertisement
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism?
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism?
Conceptual Puzzles and Policy Proposals
Edited by
Greg Bognar
&
Axel Gosseries
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022951043
ISBN 978–0–19–289409–0
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192894090.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
viii
ix
x
Introduction
1
Greg Bognar and Axel Gosseries
PART I. CONCEPTUAL PUZZLES
1. Age Discrimination: Is It Special? Is It Wrong?
13
Katharina Berndt Rasmussen
2. Does the Badness of Disability Differ from that of Old Age?
28
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
3. In Defence of Age-Differentiated Paternalism
41
Viki Møller Lyngby Pedersen
4. Age and the Social Value of Risk Reduction: Three Perspectives
53
Matthew D. Adler
5. Can Egalitarians Justify Spending More on the Elderly?
71
Paul Bou-Habib
6. Age Limits and the Significance of Entire Lives Egalitarianism
82
Axel Gosseries
7. Age Universalism Will Benefit All (Ages)
94
Simon Birnbaum and Kenneth Nelson
PART II.
POLICY PROPOSALS
8. ‘Let Them Be Children?’: Age Limits in Voting and
Conceptions of Childhood
115
Anca Gheaus
9. Age and the Voting–Driving Analogy
128
Alexandru Volacu
10. Empowering Future People by Empowering the Young?
143
Tyler M. John
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Contents vii
11. COVID-19, Age, and Rationing
159
Greg Bognar
12. Ageism in Assisted Reproduction
172
Francesca Minerva
13. An Education Resource Account for Early School Leavers
184
Andrée-Anne Cormier and Harry Brighouse
14. Differentiating Retirement Age to Compensate for
Health and Longevity Inequality?
199
Vincent Vandenberghe
15. Ageing in Place and Autonomy: Is the ‘Age-Friendly’ City
Initiative Too Elderly-Friendly?
214
Kim Angell
16. An Age-Based Delayed Housing Wealth Tax
229
Daniel Halliday
17. Two Types of Age-Sensitive Taxation
242
Manuel Sá Valente
18. An Age-Differentiated Tax on Bequests
254
Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere
Index
267
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
List of Figures
4.1 A prioritarian transformation function
57
7.1 Age-related profiles of social insurance income replacement (country group
averages 1990–2015)
101
7.2 Age-balance of income replacement in social insurance by type of generational
welfare contract in 18 OECD countries, 1990–2015
102
7.3 Income replacement in social insurance for three age-related social risks in
Japan, Norway, and Sweden, 1960–2015
103
14.1 Differentiated retirement ages equalizing (expected) ill health across and
within countries
206
14.2 Difficulty of differentiating ex post (importance of type-E and type-F errors).
The case of low-educated versus highly educated females aged 55–65 in
Germany (DEU), France (FRA), Belgium (BEL), and Poland (POL)
209
17.1 Standard and proposed distribution of income (full line) and tax rates (dotted
line)
247
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
List of Tables
1.1 Four forms of discrimination with age-related examples
20
4.1 Current-year incomes of the 35 groups
59
4.2 Utilitarian value of increase ∆p in current-year survival probability (relative to
utilitarian value of that increase for 80-year-old, low-income group)
61
4.3 CBA value of increase ∆p in current-year survival probability (relative to CBA
value of that increase for 80-year-old, low-income group)
63
4.4 Prioritarian value of increase ∆p in current-year survival probability (relative
to prioritarian value of that increase for 80-year-old, low-income group)
65
4.5 COVID-19 infection fatality risk (IFR)
66
4.6 Utilitarian social value of vaccination
67
4.7 CBA social value of vaccination
67
4.8 Prioritarian social value of vaccination
68
7.1 Type of generational profile in age-related social insurance and selected
outcomes in 18 OECD countries
104
7.A1 Variables included in the empirical analyses: Childhood risk category by
country, averages for the period 1990–2015
107
7.A2 Variables included in the empirical analyses: Working age risk category by
country, averages for the period 1990–2015
108
7.A3 Variables included in the empirical analyses: Old age risk category by country,
averages for the period 1990–2015
109
11.1 Four patients
162
14.1 Health items: Subjective health
203
14.2 Health items: Objective conditions
204
14.3 Differentiated retirement ages equalizing ill health (international reference =
67): Between- and within-country differentiation
207
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
List of Contributors
Matthew D. Adler, Richard A. Horvitz
Professor of Law and Professor of
Economics, Philosophy, and Public Policy,
Duke University
Kim Angell, Department of Philosophy,
UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Katharina Berndt Rasmussen, Department
of Philosophy, Stockholm University, and
Institute for Futures Studies
Simon Birnbaum, Department of Political
Science, Södertörn University
Greg Bognar, Department of Philosophy,
Stockholm University
Paul Bou-Habib, Department of
Government, University of Essex
Harry Brighouse, Department of
Philosophy, University of Wisconsin,
Madison
Andrée-Anne Cormier, Department of
Philosophy, York University, Glendon
College
Anca Gheaus, Department of Political
Science, Central European University
Axel Gosseries, Fonds de la Recherche
Scientifique (FNRS) and Hoover Chair in
Economic and Social Ethics, University of
Louvain (UCLouvain)
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Centre for the
Experimental-Philosophical Study of
Discrimination (CEPDISC), Aarhus
University, and Department of Philosophy,
UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Francesca Minerva, Department of
Philosophy, University of Milan
Viki Møller Lyngby Pedersen, Centre for
the Experimental-Philosophical Study of
Discrimination (CEPDISC), Department of
Political Science, Aarhus University
Kenneth Nelson, Swedish Institute for
Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm
University
Pierre Pestieau, Université de Liège; Center
for Operational Research and Econometrics
(CORE, UCLouvain); Paris School of
Economics
Gregory Ponthiere, Hoover Chair in
Economic and Social Ethics, University of
Louvain (UCLouvain)
Manuel Sá Valente, Hoover Chair in
Economic and Social Ethics and Superior
Institute of Philosophy, University of
Louvain (UCLouvain)
Daniel Halliday, School of Historical and
Philosophical Studies, University of
Melbourne
Vincent Vandenberghe, Institute of
Economic and Social Research (IRES),
Louvain Institute of Data Analysis and
Modeling in Economics and Statistics
(LIDAM), University of Louvain
(UCLouvain)
Tyler M. John, Department of Philosophy,
Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Alexandru Volacu, Faculty of Business and
Administration, University of Bucharest
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Introduction
Greg Bognar and Axel Gosseries
This book aims to contribute to the essential and timely discussion on age, ageism,
population ageing, and public policy. It attempts to demonstrate the breadth of the
challenges by covering a wide range of policy areas from health care to old-age
support, from democratic participation to education, from family to fiscal policy.
It bridges the distance between academia and public life by putting into dialogue
fresh philosophical analyses and new specific policy proposals. It approaches familiar issues such as age discrimination, justice between age groups, and democratic
participation across the ages from novel perspectives.
Our societies continue to rely extensively on age criteria, despite the fact that concern for age discrimination is not new. The US Age Discrimination in Employment
Act was adopted as far back as 1967. In Europe, age has been increasingly included in
anti-discrimination legislation over the past several decades. Legal scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists have long studied how age structures
our lives. Children studies and gerontology are vast and well-established fields of
scholarship. Yet, with few exceptions, practical philosophers have been less active
than researchers from other disciplines on the age front.1 This book aims especially
to contribute to filling this gap, in dialogue with other disciplines.
Two trends in particular render this a timely exercise. One is the ongoing process
of critically scrutinizing our societies through the prism of race, gender, disability,
and other categories. This calls for looking at whether age is different—whether it
is unique or, as it is sometimes put, ‘special’ from a normative perspective. Can this
explain that it tends to get less attention than other social categories? Should we worry
less about differential treatment on grounds of age than about differential treatment
based on race or gender? And if so, what are the difference-makers that render age
special from a normative perspective?
The other trend that warrants a closer look at age is the ageing of our societies.
Fifteen years ago, fewer than 500 million people were 65 or older. In 2030, there will
be more than one billion people over 65, and by 2050, there will be around 1.5 billion.2
During the past decade, the number of older people surpassed the number of children
under five for the first time in human history.3 In 2015, Japan was the only country
that had more than 30 per cent of its population made up by those over 60; by 2050,
this will become the case in all developed countries, including China.⁴
1 See, e.g. Daniels (1998), McKerlie (2013) or Bidadanure (2021).
2 See National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US) (2007).
3 See National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US) and the WHO (2011).
⁴ See WHO (2015).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
2 Introduction
Population ageing presents enormous challenges. Ageing societies will have to
make massive adjustments to their old-age support and healthcare systems, their
labour markets, and their social and political institutions. Population ageing will have
profound effects on family life, the nature of work, politics, and people’s life plans.
With no historical experience to rely on, societies will have to try untested, novel,
and creative ways for coping with the challenges of ageing. And they must be able to
provide ethical justifications for their choices.
Our aim is to provide a multidisciplinary discussion, with contributions especially
from philosophy but also inputs from political science, economics, sociology, and
other areas. In order to impose some order on a wide-ranging collection of topics, we
divided the book into two parts. The chapters in Part I present in-depth discussions
of conceptual and normative issues. The chapters in Part II defend specific policy
proposals, grounded in explicit normative arguments. Readers interested in conceptual issues can begin at the beginning; readers more interested in policy alternatives
can pick one of the chapters from Part II as their entry point. To help orientation, we
provide separate overviews of the two parts below.
1. Overview of Part I
Part I departs from the fundamental normative question about age. Is unequal treatment on the basis of age permissible? How does it differ, from an ethical point of view,
from other forms of differential treatment? Age discrimination has been a neglected
area in the literature on wrongful discrimination in philosophy and legal theory. The
first three chapters aim to fill some of the gaps by approaching the fundamental normative question from different directions. What do different theories of wrongful
discrimination have to say about the wrongness of age discrimination specifically?
How is age discrimination connected to disability discrimination? How should we
think about the link between paternalism and age?
In the opening chapter of Part I (‘Age Discrimination: Is It Special? Is It Wrong?’),
Katharina Berndt Rasmussen examines the morality of age discrimination by bringing together philosophical theories of wrongful discrimination and accounts of the
‘specialness’ of age—that is, defences of the claim that there is a moral difference
between discrimination on the basis of age and discrimination on other grounds such
as gender or race. After providing an overview of considerations that might make
age special, Berndt Rasmussen offers a taxonomy of different forms of age discrimination and relates them to three theories of wrongful discrimination. She finds that
these three theories differ with respect to their moral assessment of various forms
of age discrimination due to the different roles that ‘specialness’ considerations play
in each. Rather than arguing for any particular theory, however, Berndt Rasmussen
concludes by offering a template for identifying, analysing, and morally evaluating
different forms of age discrimination.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 3
In the second chapter, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen compares age discrimination
and disability discrimination (‘Does the Badness of Disability Differ from that of Old
Age?’). He begins with a familiar question from the philosophy of disability: to the
extent that being disabled is worse than being non-disabled, is this largely because of
factors that are independent of the social environment (the ‘disability as bad difference’ view) or largely because of the (ableist) nature of the social environment (the
‘disability as mere difference’ view)? Correspondingly, we might ask, to the extent
that being old is worse than being young, is this largely because of factors that are
independent of the social environment or largely because of the (ageist) nature of the
social environment? Are the answers to these questions related? If they are, how?
Lippert-Rasmussen considers whether, if we are inclined to accept the view that
the disadvantages of disability are largely caused by an ableist social environment,
we should also accept the view that the disadvantages of old age are largely caused by
an ageist social environment. He thinks we should. But Lippert-Rasmussen argues
that the view that ageist social environments are primarily responsible for the disadvantages of old age should be rejected. Therefore, we should also reject the view
that ableist social environments are primarily responsible for the disadvantages of
disability. Yet, while insisting that our views on disability constrain those we adopt
on age, Lippert-Rasmussen also stresses that we should not overstate the importance of taking a stance on the mere-difference and bad-difference divide. Rather,
we should pay more attention to the specific ways old age and disability cause disadvantage instead of trying to defend broad generalizations about what family of causes
predominates.
The third chapter examines age discrimination from the perspective of agedifferentiated paternalism. Many of us share the intuition that paternalism is less
problematic when applied to children rather than to the elderly. One interest of Viki
Møller Lyngby Pedersen’s chapter, ‘In Defence of Age-Differentiated Paternalism’, is
that she stresses that we need to consider not only the dimensions of competence and
voluntariness but also the magnitude of the good promoted by paternalistic interventions. While this dual account does not generally challenge common-sense intuitions
about paternalism, it introduces additional complexity when evaluating paternalistic
interventions in a wide range of cases. The chapter considers many examples, from
age-differentiated rules for access to sterilization, through age-differentiated fines for
not using a helmet, to age-differentiated prices for cigarettes. Readers especially interested in these issues may also want to take a look at Chapter 8 (on paternalism and
conceptions of childhood), Chapter 12 (on paternalism in assisted reproduction and
social freezing), or Chapter 13 (on anti-paternalism in compulsory education).
The remaining chapters in Part I take up issues of distributive justice. They consider the connection between age and different methods of policy evaluation. They
examine the role of age in egalitarian theories of distributive justice. They ask whether
it is justified that modern welfare states spend more on the elderly than on other age
groups, explore the implications of the idea that principles of distributive equality
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
4 Introduction
should apply to whole lives rather than particular segments (or stages) in life, and
defend the view that social insurance systems should be age-balanced, offering
similar levels of income replacement across age-related social risks.
In ‘Age and the Social Value of Risk Reduction: Three Perspectives’, Matthew D.
Adler compares three frameworks of policy analysis from the perspective of fatality
risk reduction for different age groups. Do they imply that the value of risk reduction
depends on age—and how do they relate age to other factors? The three frameworks
are utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and cost–benefit analysis.
Adler finds that the value of risk reduction decreases with age but increases with
income according to utilitarianism. It decreases even more sharply with age according to prioritarianism, but prioritarianism can also neutralize the effect of income.
And for cost–benefit analysis, the value of risk reduction increases with income even
more sharply than for utilitarianism, while it first increases and than decreases with
increasing age. None of the frameworks, therefore, is neutral with respect to age. They
value fatality risk reduction differently depending on a person’s age (and income).
Prioritarianism is the only approach that can neutralize the effect of income and put
higher value of reducing risks to the young. That may be an attractive feature.
Paul Bou-Habib, in his chapter ‘Can Egalitarians Justify Spending More on the
Elderly?’, takes an egalitarian approach to age and fair distribution. He argues that
the fact that modern welfare states devote a disproportionate amount of their budget
to the needs of the elderly raises a puzzle. People who reach old age are often, on the
whole, more fortunate than those who don’t because they have enjoyed a longer life.
In devoting disproportionate expenditure towards their needs, the welfare state thus
appears to be privileging the needs of those who are more fortunate than others.
Bou-Habib examines the response to this puzzle provided by relational egalitarians (who hold that we should care not only about how the welfare state distributes
resources between persons but also about whether it protects people from mistreatment by others). Relational egalitarians justify disproportionate expenditure on the
elderly on the grounds that it is necessary to protect them against domination and
marginalization, among other forms of mistreatment. But Bou-Habib finds that the
relational egalitarian response does not solve the puzzle. He proposes a different solution, based on two claims. First, suffering is intrinsically bad and should be prevented,
even when it is experienced by persons who are more fortunate than others. Second,
disproportionate expenditure on the needs of the elderly is a form of insurance that
all persons would have purchased in fair circumstances.
In his chapter, ‘Age Limits and the Significance of Entire-Lives Egalitarianism’,
Axel Gosseries focuses on the claim that principles of distributive justice should be
applied to whole lives—that is, to determine what we owe to people as a matter of fair
distribution, we need to consider how they fare during their entire lives. Gosseries
provides an overview of the entire life view and explores its possible underlying intuitions. He separates a defensive version of the view (which argues that some age limits
are not objectionable) from an affirmative one (which argues that some age limits are
actually desirable). He concludes that while age limits tend to provide one of the best
illustrations of the practical relevance of the ‘entire life’ debate, the latter does not
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 5
necessarily offer us insights that are as significant as expected to defend age limits
over their whole range.
Part I closes with a more empirically orientated chapter. It starts with the observation that welfare states differ greatly in the extent to which they provide social
protection for various age-related social risks. They set different priorities between
needs associated with childhood, maturity, and old age. In ‘Age Universalism will
Benefit All (Ages)’, Simon Birnbaum and Kenneth Nelson explore and defend the
ideal of age universalism in social insurance, according to which the degree of income
replacement should be similar across age-related social risks. The argument suggests
pragmatic advantages of age-balanced social insurance, showing that it tends to provide higher levels of income replacement for age-related risks throughout the life
cycle and achieve more favourable social outcomes in all age groups with respect to
poverty rates, trust, and subjective well-being.
2. Overview of Part II
The chapters in Part II have a more policy-oriented focus. They cover a range of topics from different perspectives. The topics include political participation, education,
health care, retirement, and old-age social services as well as taxation and inheritance.
The first cluster of chapters is on political participation and voting rights. The
chapters address whether and how disenfranchising the young can be justified on
the basis of different conceptions of childhood, whether the voting–driving analogy
can justify disenfranchising the old, and whether giving extra weight to the young
in political decision-making can be a plausible avenue to addressing concerns about
political short-termism.
In the first chapter, ‘“Let Them Be Children”? Age Limits in Voting and Conceptions of Childhood’, Anca Gheaus explores alternative views about the nature and
value of childhood and their relevance to the issue of children’s voting rights. In particular, she contrasts one view that regards childhood as a mere deficiency and as
preparation time for adulthood with a family of views that emphasizes the value of
goods unique to childhood, such as playfulness and carefreeness. Defenders of deficiency views tend to assume that the lack of agency is an unqualified bad for children
and neglect ways in which childhood allows access to other sources of value.
Gheaus maps out how the different accounts bear on arguments for and against
enfranchising children. She also explains why children who live in a society in
which many adults fail to comply with their duties of intergenerational justice have
a weightier interest in voting and hence why the case for children’s enfranchisement
is stronger in such circumstances.
The next chapter continues to explore political participation by looking at the
other end of life. Should there be an age limit such that people over it lose their eligibility to vote? After all, loss of ability is often used to justify restricting people’s
freedom. For instance, age-related loss of ability is used to justify the requirement
of periodic renewal of driving licences and could result in the loss of driving permit
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
6 Introduction
for the elderly, limiting their freedom of movement. Can there be an analogous case
for voting? In ‘Age and the Voting–Driving Analogy’, Alexandru Volacu asks this
question. He examines arguments by analogy in general and formulates such an argument linking driving and voting. He considers different ways the argument could be
applied to age-adjusted voting rights. However, in the end, he finds that there are significant dissimilarities between driving and voting. Thus, Volacu concludes that the
argument is unsuccessful.
In ‘Empowering Future People by Empowering the Young?’, Tyler M. John argues
that the state is plagued with problems of political short-termism: excessive priority
given to near-term benefits at the expense of benefits further in the future. Political
scientists and economists reckon that political leaders rarely look beyond the next
2–5 years, exacerbating problems such as climate change and pandemics. What can
be done to counter this? One possible mechanism involves apportioning greater relative political influence to the young. The idea is that younger citizens generally have
greater additional life expectancy than older citizens, and thus it looks reasonable to
expect that they have preferences that are extended further into the future. If we give
greater relative political influence to the young, our political system might exhibit
greater concern for the future.
But John shows that giving greater political power to the young is unlikely in
itself to make states significantly less short-termist: no empirical relationship has
been found between age and willingness to support long-termist policies. Instead, he
proposes a more promising age-based mechanism. States should develop youth citizens’ assemblies that ensure accountability to future generations through a scheme of
retrospective accountability. Policymakers would be rewarded in the future in proportion to the effects of their policies on the long run. This would incentivize them
now to choose policies that have the best long-term consequences.
The second couple of chapters in Part II are on health care. The first is Greg Bognar’s chapter on ‘COVID-19, Age, and Rationing’. During the COVID-19 pandemic,
some hospitals found themselves short of ventilators, intensive care unit (ICU) beds,
and qualified medical personnel to take care of patients. Physicians had to make
difficult, life-and-death choices. They were aided by various guidelines and recommendations issued by governments and medical associations. Bognar reviews some
of these guidelines, looking in particular at the role of age and life expectancy as criteria for the rationing of healthcare resources. He defends the view that the ethical
aim of triage should be to maximize benefits and concludes that while neither age
nor life expectancy should be used to categorically exclude patients, both may have
a role in triage by virtue of their connection to capacity to benefit.
Francesca Minerva’s chapter, ‘Ageism in Assisted Reproduction’, begins from the
fact that female fertility declines at a much faster rate than male fertility. While, in the
past decades, assisted reproduction treatments (ARTs) have dramatically increased
women’s chances of getting pregnant over the age of 35, it remains very difficult for
women above their mid-40s to get pregnant, given that ART success rates decrease
with increasing age. Moreover, many European countries legally prevent women over
the age of 45 from accessing ARTs.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 7
Minerva opposes upper age limits on ARTs for women, rejecting three arguments
that are based, respectively, on paternalism (to protect the mother’s health), the link
between age and increased risk of abnormalities for the child, and the diminished
ability of older parents to take care of children. She also calls for a more pro-active
policy, including free access to social freezing and investment in research into ways
of delaying menopause.
In the following chapter, Andrée-Anne Cormier and Harry Brighouse propose ‘An
Education Resource Account for Early School Leavers’. They argue that school should
cease to be compulsory at age 16 and that an education resource account (ERA)
should be established for students who leave school at that age. The ERA would be
sufficient to cover three years of full-time education. It could be linked to inflation
and early school leavers could use it in accredited non-profit educational institutions
at any later point in their lives.
Two sets of arguments support their proposal. The first, building on the empirical literature, focuses on efficiency and highlights the advantages of an ERA with
respect to the ‘disruptive’ students issue in particular. The second set of arguments is
anti-paternalistic. Cormier and Brighouse distinguish three anti-paternalistic arguments: the view that individuals are the best judges of their own welfare (also
discussed in Chapter 3), the idea that autonomous decision-making is a component of well-being, and a respect-based view of what renders anti-paternalism
wrong. While they endorse the latter two arguments, their ERA proposal still has
a mildly paternalistic dimension since its funds can only be used for education
purposes.
Vincent Vandenberghe takes up the issue of retirement in ‘Differentiating Retirement Age to Compensate for Health and Longevity Inequality’. As he points out,
usually a uniform age is used to proxy work capacity loss and trigger the payment
of pensions. Recently, however, some have argued that we need several retirement
ages to better match the distribution of work (in)capacity across socio-demographic
groups. At first sight, this proposal makes perfect sense. Work capacity declines
faster among low-income and low-educated individuals. But there is also a lot of
unaccounted heterogeneity even inside narrowly defined socio-economic groups.
And this compromises the feasibility and desirability of retirement-age differentiation. Under a regime of systematic retirement-age differentiation, there would be
many situations with no retirement for people with serious work restrictions and,
simultaneously, numerous cases where entirely healthy people enjoy retirement. An
alternative approach would be to stick to a uniform retirement age, backed up by a
reinforced disability scheme.
Old age also takes centre stage in Kim Angell’s ‘Ageing in Place and Autonomy: Is
the “Age-Friendly” City Initiative Too Elderly-Friendly?’ Angell is concerned with the
‘age-friendly cities’ initiative aimed at enhancing people’s opportunity to age in place.
He presents an autonomy-based defence of the idea and examines the moral claim
that the elderly can make in support of their ability to age in place. He emphasizes,
among other considerations, that ageing in place can have cognitive benefits through
the routines and habits made possible by familiar environments.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download
Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
8 Introduction
He argues, however, that the claims of the elderly can come into conflict with the
claims of the young. We should not only look at today’s elderly but also anticipate how
today’s young will fare when they get old. Angell appeals to the cohort-specific predictions by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)—
such that, for example, today’s young are expected to be worse off when old than the
currently old—to make the case for an ‘all-age-friendly’ (or even ‘young-friendly’)
interpretation of the age-friendly cities initiative, while also insisting on the importance of policies benefiting low-income families (regardless of age) and promoting
intergenerational housing initiatives.
The last cluster of chapters in the book focuses on age and taxation, looking
respectively at housing, income, and bequests.
In his chapter, ‘An Age-Based Delayed Housing Wealth Tax’, Daniel Halliday
considers taxation and housing wealth. Popular narratives around ageing and intergenerational inequality suggest that young people increasingly tend to subsidize older
people in spite of enjoying poorer economic prospects. One specific concern is that
older and younger birth cohorts are unequally situated with respect to the distribution of housing wealth as well as the distribution of the tax burden. Halliday addresses
this concern by proposing an age-based delayed housing wealth tax. The idea is that
once homeowners reach a certain age, they are charged some portion of their home’s
value on an annual basis, which would eventually be paid to the tax office upon the
death of the surviving spouse. This tax can be avoided by downsizing to a home
of lesser value and thereby freeing up housing to be purchased by younger people.
Retaining a valuable home means, instead, incurring a tax liability that can be used to
fund the benefits consumed by retirees. A delayed housing wealth tax can be designed
to accommodate variables such as couples who differ in age or single retired homeowners. Halliday argues that his proposal compares favourably with alternatives, such
as inheritance taxation, for getting older people to absorb the costs of their care. Just
as in the previous chapter, access to housing for the young is a central concern.
In his chapter, Manuel Sá Valente distinguishes between ‘Two Types of AgeSensitive Taxation’. One is a form of cumulative income taxation which taxes annual
income, taking into account all earlier income years instead of just the last one. The
other is an explicitly age-differentiated scheme that taxes annual income adjusted
by a rate that depends on the taxpayer’s age. The chapter first presents reasons
to support cumulative income taxation and examines how it would affect fiscal
obligations across life. Then, it argues that maximin egalitarians—that is, egalitarians
who give absolute priority to improving the situation of the least well off—should
aim at a hump-shaped tax rate across people’s lives. Such a rate reflects a concern
about both early death and poverty in old age, hence focusing on the young and
the elderly, not the middle-aged. The chapter questions whether cumulative income
taxes can deliver this result without resorting to explicitly age-differentiated taxes. It
reaches the conclusion that while cumulative income taxation can benefit the young
(including the short-lived among them), age-differentiated taxes are necessary to
protect the elderly poor.
In the final chapter, Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere present four arguments
‘An Age-Differentiated
Tax onat
Bequests’—that
is, a tax rate on
Downloadsupporting
Complete
Ebook By email
etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 9
inheritance that varies with the age of the deceased. The arguments are based on
different ethical foundations and lead to an inheritance tax that can either increase
or decrease with the age of the deceased. Pestieau and Ponthiere make the case for an
age-differentiated tax based on the idea of compensating unlucky prematurely dead
persons. Their view supports a bequest tax that increases with the age of the deceased.
Along with Chapters 5 and 17, their chapter illustrates the many normative problems
that differential longevity raises.
∗∗∗
Together, these chapters provide us with a sense of the complexity of the issues at
stake. The account we accept about the wrongness of discrimination makes a difference to which age-based policies can be defended. So does the view of paternalism
we take and, more generally, the background theory of justice we endorse. It matters whether we consider differential longevity unfair, whether we are concerned
with equality between entire lives or parts of lives, whether we hold that differential treatment by age is relevantly similar to unequal treatment by race, gender, or
disability. The justification of age-based policies can be affected by a multitude of
seemingly remote normative commitments and ideas. In addition, it is influenced by
empirical assumptions about age and ageing. Several chapters in this book have critically discussed such assumptions, including the connection of age to specific abilities
(for instance, working capacity or political competence), characteristics (for instance,
fertility) or dispositions (for instance, long-termist preferences).
All this suggests that it is probably wise to renounce the quest for a unified view
of the normative relevance of age. The role of age is likely to remain different in different policy areas and in different policies within those areas. This means that we
are left with several tasks. We should keep critically investigating the degree to which
specific age-based policies can be justified. When we develop and debate new policies, we should continuously keep in mind how they are affected by age and how they
would affect different age groups. We should keep unveiling common patterns of justification that operate across several domains and that oppose or support age-based
practices. Behind all that, there is the question whether there should be a society
on the horizon in which age loses its structuring function: where people can work
before studying, retire before starting to work, or have children well after having
started their professional career. We hope that this book will contribute to helping
the reader decide whether such a society would not only be feasible but also, and
more importantly, desirable.
References
Bidadanure, Juliana Uhuru. 2021. Justice Across Ages: Treating Young and Old as Equals.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Daniels, Norman. 1998. Am I My Parents’ Keeper? An Essay on Justice between the Young
and the Old. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
10 Introduction
McKerlie, Dennis. 2013. Justice between the Young and the Old. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US). 2007. Why Population Aging Matters: A Global Perspective. Baltimore, MA: National Institute on Aging,
National Institutes of Health (US).
National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US) and the WHO (World
Health Organization). 2011. Global Health and Ageing. Baltimore, MA: National
Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US) and WHO.
World Health Organization (WHO). 2015. World Report on Ageing and Health. Geneva:
World Health Organization.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
PA RT I
CONCEPTUAL PUZZLES
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
1
Age Discrimination
Is It Special? Is It Wrong?
Katharina Berndt Rasmussen
1. Introduction
Imagine Dana and Eli, two applicants for a vacant position. While both are qualified
in all relevant respects, neither is called to be interviewed for the job simply because
of their gender (Dana is female) and race (Eli is black), respectively. These cases are
intuitively clear instances of discrimination and intuitively morally wrong.
They are classified as group discrimination also by the following definition:1
An agent (say, an employer) group discriminates against someone (say, an applicant) on grounds of property P, by doing something (e.g., disregarding their
application) if and only if:
(i) in disregarding the application, the employer treats the applicant worse than
she would have treated him, had he not had P, or had she not believed him to
have P,
(ii) it is because the applicant has P or because the employer believes that he has P,
that she treats him worse, and
(iii) P is the property of being a member of a socially salient group, i.e., a group perceived membership of which is important to the structure of social interactions
across a wide range of social contexts.
Being female and being black, respectively, are socially salient properties in many
societies. Clearly, not being called to be interviewed for a job that one applied for
just because of such a property—when one is qualified and would have been called
had one lacked the property—amounts to being treated worse in at least one of the
following senses:
(a) being made worse off (e.g. deprived of an opportunity), or
1 Cf. Lippert-Rasmussen (2014); Berndt Rasmussen (2019); and many of the entries in LippertRasmussen (2017). In legal terms, this definition captures (possibly legally acceptable) differential
treatment as well as (unlawful) discrimination. On the moral status of these phenomena, see section 4.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download
ByIsemail
at etutorsource@gmail.com
14 AgeComplete
Discrimination:Ebook
Is It Special?
It Wrong?
(b) being treated as inferior (e.g. considered not worthy of equal consideration with
other—male or white—applicants).2
And arguably, treating someone worse in at least one of these senses just because of
their socially salient property is prima facie morally wrong.3 Hence, ceteris paribus,
Dana and Eli are wrongfully discriminated against.
Now, imagine Alex, Billie, and Charlie, three equally qualified applicants for a
vacant position. They belong to three different birth cohorts (say, three consecutive
generations) and thus to different age groups: Alex is 60+, Billie is 40, and Charlie is
under 18. While Billie is called back to be interviewed, the other two are not—simply
because of their old and young age, respectively.
Clearly, being old (60+) and being young (under 18) are socially salient properties
in many societies and, in this sense, comparable to being female and being black.
Moreover, in not being called back, Alex and Charlie suffer the same form of worse
treatment as Dana and Eli. Hence, even their cases should be classified as discrimination by the above definition and count as morally wrong for the same reasons.
Writers on age discrimination, however, suggest that age is ‘special’, that is, relevantly different from other grounds of discrimination such as gender or race. Such
specialness, in turn, might have moral ramifications, possibly making age discrimination less severe, or more justifiable, than these other forms. The specialness of age
may thus translate into lesser moral seriousness of age discrimination. Our practices
and intuitions seem to support this idea: in many societies, it is common and commonly accepted that, for example, the right to vote and to run for office is not granted
to minors, that car or life insurance premiums are age-adjusted, or that retirement at
a certain age becomes mandatory. On the other hand, there might be good reasons
to change these practices and discount these intuitions.
This chapter examines the moral status of age discrimination by bringing together
accounts of the wrongness of discrimination with accounts of the specialness of age.
Section 2 summarizes the special features of age and their role in different proposals
to justify the use of age criteria and suggests a template within which these specialness
considerations become relevant: the argument from specialness. Section 3 explores
different forms of age discrimination. Section 4 presents three influential accounts of
the wrongness of discrimination and shows that different forms of age discrimination are covered by different wrongness accounts. Moreover, I return to the proposals
justifying the use of age criteria, based on the specialness of age, and explore the roles
they can play under these different accounts. Section 5 concludes.
2. Specialness of age and age-based treatment
The debate on age discrimination largely focuses on chronological age, defined as
the number of years from a person’s birth to the given date. Chronological age
2 See Berndt Rasmussen (2019).
3 For ease of exposition, I switch between talking about an action’s being prima facie (morally) wrong
and there being a prima facie (moral) reason against the action.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 15
(henceforth without the qualifier) has three special features, as compared to, for
example, gender or race:
(a) perfect passage-of-time correlation (by definition);
(b) high divisibility: a normal life span can be partitioned into many alternative age
segments of different sizes; and
(c) multiple belonging: a person with a normal life span will belong to a number of
such age segments as time passes.⁴
A key idea is that, because of these special features, relying on age criteria (e.g. age
limits) may sometimes be justified in two different ways. First, means–end efficiency:
age is a good proxy (statistical indicator) for certain given target variables and, as
such, a tool for more efficient decision-making. Second, overall betterness: using age
criteria leads to better overall outcomes, in some sense. I will discuss these two proposals in sections 2.1 and 2.2, indicating which specialness features (a–c) become
relevant at different points in the arguments.
2.1 Means–end efficiency: Age as reliable and precise proxy
In typical employment cases, applicant age is ‘significantly correlated’ (Gosseries
2014: 63f.) to, for example, job qualifications and expected productivity. This is
mainly due to specialness feature (a), passage-of-time correlation.
To illustrate: Charlie, who is under 18, most likely does not have a college or university degree. This has to do with the way our societies organize their education
systems: age of entry, sequence of educational levels, number of years required for
a degree, etc. Also, under-18-year-olds are likely not to have the cognitive capacities
required for jobs where risk management is central. This has to do with typical neurological/brain development. Alex, who is 60+, is likely to lack some of the physical
and cognitive abilities of an applicant in their forties, like Billie, but also likely to have
more experience-based competences. This has to do with processes of physical and
mental decline and with the time dimension of learning curves, respectively.
In a medical context, given statistical facts about life expectancy, age can work as
a proxy for remaining life years (Cupit 2013; Bognar 2015). Thus, age can be one
relevant factor for allocating scarce health resources, as exemplified by the concepts
of quality-adjusted life year (QALY), and disability-adjusted life year (DALY).⁵
Thus, for a variety of reasons, age can be a reliable proxy for relevant individual target variables. Of course, for any given applicant or patient, an employer or medical
provider might make a more accurate assessment of such target variables by conducting an individual assessment. Yet, since the latter tend to be more time-consuming,
⁴ For discussions of these features, see Macnicol (2006); Cupit (2013); Gosseries (2014); Bidadanure
(2016).
⁵ See Bickenbach (2016).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
ByIsemail
at etutorsource@gmail.com
16 AgeComplete
Discrimination:Ebook
Is It Special?
It Wrong?
complicated, or morally problematic, relying on age criteria can facilitate decisionmaking. Thus, to promote means–end efficiency, there may be reasons to use age
criteria.
Justifying age criteria by reference to means–end efficiency also relies on specialness feature (b), high divisibility. Since a normal lifespan is divisible into any set of
age segments that are relevant in a given context, using age criteria potentially allows
for higher levels of ‘precision’ (Gosseries 2014: 63f.; cf. Bidadanure 2016) in approximating the relevant target variables, compared to, for example, gender and race.
Using more precise age criteria allows for increased means–end efficiency (at least,
if information is not too costly).
However, there is a general objection against this efficiency justification of age criteria. In openly sexist or racist societies, where women or people of colour are denied
higher education, gender and race can also be reliable—and sufficiently precise—
proxies. Still, we would not consider the resulting discriminatory hiring decisions
as morally less severe or more justifiable than their counterparts in our (less openly
sexist or racist) societies due to these different social facts.
Whether something is a good proxy is contingent on, for example, physical, biological, and psychological facts but also social facts that depend on (the aggregate
of) our choices, such as how we choose to set up our education system. When social
facts are invoked to justify the use of a proxy, the justificatory burden shifts to these
social facts and underlying choices. This means that if we seek to justify the use of
age criteria by appealing to the fact that age is a good proxy, yet this latter fact is
explained by the fact that our society is organized around age criteria, our argument
becomes circular unless we can independently justify society’s organization around
age criteria (Gosseries 2014: 65f.; Lippert-Rasmussen 2014: 283–299). The analogy
with gender and race thus serves to illuminate the point that establishing age as a
reliable and precise proxy for certain target variables is not sufficient for an overall
justification of age criteria.
Moreover, we should pause to note that this, indeed, is not necessary either. One
could reject the idea that age is a reliable, sufficiently precise proxy for specific individual target variables and still concede that relying on age criteria allows for better
overall outcomes on a collective level. For example, if the justification of certain age
limits on alcohol consumption appeals to epidemiological evidence of their correlation to reduced youth criminality or disease rates, such criteria may be used primarily
as a means for achieving a better collective outcome, even though correlation with
specific individual target properties may be weak. The concern for better overall
outcomes is thus distinct from the concern for means–end efficiency. And overall
outcomes need to be considered even in the final analysis of the justificatory force of
means–end efficiency considerations.
2.2 Better overall outcomes: Utility or fairness/equality
Attempts to justify age criteria from better overall outcomes are mainly concerned
either with utility or with fairness/equality. One key consideration under the headline
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 17
of utility is collective ‘sequence efficiency’ (Gosseries 2014: 70f.): organizing certain
aspects of society around age criteria promotes total utility as it makes society overall
more functional. The education system is an obvious example. There are efficiency
reasons for making people go through stages of education, starting at a young,
learning-conducive age and consecutively taking higher levels, prior to entering the
labour market.
Again, however, one could object that there might be overall efficiency gains from
race or gender discrimination—say, in a caste-like hierarchy—which we would not
grant any justificatory force. With age, though, there is a crucial difference. In the
education system example, collective sequence efficiency originates from individual
sequence efficiency.⁶ In certain contexts, ordering someone’s activities in chronological sequences promotes their achievement of the context-given objectives due to the
specialness feature (a), perfect correlation with the passage of time, which, in turn,
correlates with other factors. For example, learning how to spell prior to signing up
for creative writing classes yields a better outcome for the individual than the reverse.
Individual sequence efficiency is thus a further specialness consideration—and one
which can appeal even to non-utilitarians. The trade-offs it is based on are not interpersonal, as in the sexist or racist caste system, where some people’s extra burdens
generate benefits for others. Rather, the trade-offs are intrapersonal: collective gains
result from a more efficient distribution of burdens and benefits over individuals’
lifetimes, as allowed by the specialness feature (c), multiple belonging. Moreover,
specialness feature (b), high divisibility, facilitates the tailoring of age segments to
improve intrapersonal distributions—to the overall benefit of both the individuals
and the collective whole.
From a perspective of fairness or equality, age criteria seem problematic as
they imply worse treatment (in at least one of the above senses) of some—and,
hence, inequality. Old Alex and young Charlie are denied an employment opportunity, which is granted to middle-aged Billie. The key idea with justifying such
treatment, nevertheless, from a fairness or equality perspective is that, in the case
of age, the inequality is mitigated once we consider whole lives.
According to ‘complete life neutrality’ considerations (Gosseries 2014: 66ff), for
a fixed set of age criteria, ceteris paribus, there will be no inequality in treatment
over complete lives. The ceteris paribus clause ensures that—due to specialness feature (c) (i.e. multiple belonging)—each age criterion for resource allocation impacts
equally on everyone, if only at different points in time, thus treating each equally over
their lifetime.⁷
However, this idea presupposes a very demanding ceteris paribus condition, where
everyone has the same life length as well as the same lifetime profile of needs, goals,
and desires. Yet, realistically, a medical treatment offered to all those under 70 affects
those who happen to need it at 65 or 75, respectively, very differently; a pensions
⁶ Bidadanure (2016: 247) calls this ‘lifespan efficiency’. Alternatively, one could ask which resource allocation pattern over their lifetime a rational chooser would prefer from behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance
(Cupit 2013; cf. Daniels 1988; Bognar 2008, 2015).
⁷ Some egalitarians may object that relational inequalities at any specific time matter and do not
disappear because of reversed inequalities at some other time (Bidadanure 2016).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
ByIsemail
at etutorsource@gmail.com
18 AgeComplete
Discrimination:Ebook
Is It Special?
It Wrong?
plan for all and only those above 65 benefits only whoever lives that long (Cupit
2013). Moreover, changes in these age criteria—or in the environment in which these
criteria receive significance—may lead to complete life inequalities between birth
cohorts. For example, if the required age for a benefit is raised at some point in time,
all birth cohorts reaching the threshold age after that point will be worse off, over
their lifetime, than previous ones.⁸
According to ‘affirmative egalitarian’ considerations (Gosseries 2014: 70ff), age
criteria may effectively reduce existing social inequalities over complete lives. Consider, for example, mandatory retirement at age 67. Assume that there is a number
of consecutive birth cohorts, each of which has a certain proportion of unemployed
individuals. As one cohort reaches the threshold, their jobs are made vacant and filled
with members of the subsequent cohorts, shifting employment benefits to some previously unemployed. Later on, these cohorts, of course, have to do the same for their
successors. Then, people’s life trajectories are equalized in the sense that fewer will
go through stretches of unemployment prior to, while all are retired after, this age
threshold.⁹
Another example is the allocation of life-saving treatment: fairness may require
that we give it to a young person, who has not yet reached the ‘fair innings’ threshold of a ‘complete or full life’, rather than to someone beyond this threshold (Bognar
2008). Similarly, McKerlie (1992) suggests that, due to differences in life span, we
should discriminate in favour of the young to concentrate resources to life stages
through which more will live.
Acknowledging inequalities over whole lives (e.g. in employment opportunities or
life years) combined with special feature (c), multiple belonging, may thus provide
affirmative egalitarian support for age-based treatment.
2.3 Argument from specialness
To pinpoint the role of specialness considerations for the overall moral assessment of
age discrimination, I propose the following argument from specialness:
(1) There is a prima facie reason against group discrimination.
(2) Age-based treatment is a form of group discrimination (like gender- or racebased treatment).
(3) In some contexts, specialness considerations concerning means–end efficiency
or overall better outcomes provide reasons for age-based treatment that outweigh
the prima facie reason against it.
(4) Hence, in such contexts, we have overall reason for age-based treatment.
⁸ The ‘diversification’ approach (Gosseries 2014: 63) highlights that complete life inequalities, resulting
from age criteria, are moderated due to age’s specialness: criteria tend to vary across contexts (due to (b)),
and resulting disadvantages tend to spread out over an individual’s lifetime (due to (c)).
⁹ See Wedeking (1990); Arneson (2006: 797f.). For dissenting views, see Overall (2006); Nussbaum and
Levmore (2017).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 19
The specialness considerations of premise (3) have just been explored. In section 3,
I briefly address premise (2) and consider four ways in which age-based treatment
constitutes group discrimination. In section 4, I consider three influential accounts
of the prima facie wrongness of group discrimination concerning premise (1).
3. Forms of age discrimination
Whenever an agent’s age-based treatment of another individual relies on a statistical correlation between age and some agent-relevant end, aiming at means–end
efficiency, we are dealing with statistical discrimination. We can capture the statistical version of age discrimination by modifying condition (ii) of our definition of
group discrimination:
(ii∗ ) it is because the employer believes that the applicant has property P, and that
P is statistically correlated to a target variable that is relevant for the employer, that
she treats him worse. (See Lippert-Rasmussen 2014: 81; Schauer 2017: 42f.)
The general idea is that an agent believes that some socially salient property (say,
old age) is statistically correlated to a relevant end (such as productivity) and
therefore treats old applicants worse in the sense of making them worse off or
treating them as inferior, for example, by straightforwardly dismissing their application. Note that agents and subjects could also be collectives rather than individuals: say, a society enacting policies that affect age groups differently on the
basis of widely shared or publicly communicated beliefs concerning such statistical
correlations.
Statistical discrimination is typically considered as an instance of direct discrimination (Lippert-Rasmussen 2014: 88). Direct discrimination is often characterized in
terms of an agent’s intention to treat people differently—and indirect discrimination
in terms of a ‘facially neutral’ policy that treats all the same but, non-intentionally,
has disparate impact.1⁰
This orthodox dichotomy, however, confounds two distinctions. One is between
differential treatment (treating older and younger people differently) and disparate
impact (treating all the same when this affects older and younger people differently).
The other distinction is between the intentional and non-intentional use of (agerelated) criteria. These two distinctions result in four, rather than two, distinct forms
of discrimination (Berndt Rasmussen 2020).
Age discrimination, understood as statistical discrimination according to condition (ii∗ ), can fall under either differential treatment or disparate impact on the
intentional dimension. For example (Table 1.1: box I), an employer who sets a minimum hiring age of 25 due to neurological evidence that under-25-year-olds tend
1⁰ See Macnicol (2006: 21); Altman (2016: §3.1); Lippert-Rasmussen (2017: 3); Moreau (2017:
166–167).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
ByIsemail
at etutorsource@gmail.com
20 AgeComplete
Discrimination:Ebook
Is It Special?
It Wrong?
Table 1.1 Four forms of discrimination with age-related examples
Differential treatment
Disparate impact of the same
treatment
Intentional
(I) Intentionally using age as a
criterion for differential treatment:
setting a minimum hiring age of 25
Non-intentional
(III) Treating differently without
intention: perceiving equally
qualified older applicants as less
qualified, due to implicit age bias11
(II) Employing a facially neutral
criterion, ‘overqualified’, while
intending its differential impact
on older applicants
(IV) Employing a facially neutral
criterion, ‘overqualified’, without
intending its differential impact
on older applicants
to have underdeveloped brain regions for risk assessment, statistically discriminates
against those under 25 in the differential treatment sense. (Had the employer set this
age limit because of her dislike of younger people, this would not be statistical discrimination.) Or (box II), an employer who uses the criterion ‘overqualified’ because
she prefers younger employees can be said to statistically discriminate against older
applicants, in the disparate impact sense, if this preference is due to her belief that
younger age correlates with ‘more grit’. (Had her preference instead reflected a fear
of ageing, this would not be statistical discrimination.)
Even collective agents can be said to statistically discriminate (against individuals
or groups), for example, when a society publicly justifies a minimum employment
age with reference to statistical correlations between such a policy and overall education levels. (Had this policy instead been publicly justified by reference to religious
doctrine, this would not have been statistical discrimination.)
According to this analysis, all statistical age discrimination is intentional (in an
individual or collective sense). But not all forms of intentional age discrimination fall
under the label of statistical discrimination, for example, those due to dislike, fear, or
religious doctrine. And, as Table 1.1 suggests, there are also forms of age discrimination that constitute non-intentional discrimination, for example, due to implicit age
bias (box III) or due to failing to consider that one’s criteria may affect different age
groups differently (box IV).
A further upshot is that, by teasing apart the two conflated distinctions underlying
the orthodox dichotomy of direct and indirect discrimination, we get equipped with
a wider, yet still unifying lens. The lens is wider in helping us capture a wider variety of
phenomena that qualify as age discrimination. It is unifying in providing a coherent
template for the further evaluation of this variety. Using this new lens means that we
refrain from using the conflated direct/indirect distinction and instead try to state
clearly which of the four forms of discrimination we are interested in, or dealing with
in a specific case.
11 For empirical studies, see Cortina et al. (2013); Malinen and Johnston (2013); Derous and Decoster
(2017).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 21
4. Wrongness of age discrimination
This new taxonomy has repercussions for the moral status of discrimination. I will
sketch three prominent accounts of the prima facie wrongness of discrimination and
apply them to the four forms of age discrimination. For each of these three accounts,
moreover, I consider whether reasons derived from age’s specialness, as identified in
section 2, may outweigh such prima facie reasons.
4.1 Intention-focused accounts
According to one influential account, an instance of discrimination is prima facie
morally wrong when and because it is ‘premised on the belief that some types of
people are morally worthier than others’, in the sense of meriting greater moral concern (Alexander 1992: 161). According to another such account, such an instance is
prima facie wrong when and because it is ‘done from unwarranted animus or prejudice against persons of [a socially salient] type’ (Arneson 2006: 787f.). These accounts
thus focus on the agent’s intentions: the mental states motivating their act.
To illustrate: if Alex, who is 60+ is not called back for an interview, and this is due to
the employer’s belief that older applicants are just not worth the trouble or to an aversion against older people (Table 1.1: box I), this constitutes prima facie wrongful age
discrimination. The same holds if Alex’s application instead fails some facially neutral
criterion (say, ‘overqualified’) that the employer has posited because of such mental
states (box II). Now, consider some variations. For example, the employer may be
motivated by affirmative egalitarian considerations: they want to give an equalizing
push to younger applicants, who are not as firmly established in the job market as
their older competitors. Or they go for means–end efficiency and uses age as a proxy,
thus engaging in statistical discrimination. Then, the employer’s treatment of Alex
turns out as not prima facie wrong since it is motivated not by the above objectionable
intentions but rather by specialness considerations. As sketched so far, intentionfocused accounts provide intuitively correct judgements of a variety of cases and,
moreover, can take specialness considerations into account.
However, now suppose that the employer acts—intentionally—from religious doctrine that does not imply any assumptions of inferiority, aversion, or prejudice. For
example, they believe that people above 60 should be given time to rest or worship instead of having to work (Table 1.1: box I). Turning down Alex’s application
would then not qualify as prima facie wrong.12 Moreover, all non-intentional forms
of age-based treatment—due to implicit age bias (box III) or mere failure to grasp the
hiring criteria’s disparate impact (box IV)—get a moral free pass. Since they are not
12 See Arneson (2006: 801f.).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
ByIsemail
at etutorsource@gmail.com
22 AgeComplete
Discrimination:Ebook
Is It Special?
It Wrong?
motivated by the objectionable intentions, according to these accounts, there is no
prima facie reason against them. These verdicts seem intuitively less plausible. Proponents of intention-focused accounts must either bite these bullets or considerably
revise their accounts to include even ‘benign’ intentions and non-intentional forms
of discrimination (e.g. framing implicit biases as aversions or deriving the failure to
consider the elderlies’ vulnerabilities from beliefs about their inferiority).
Now, consider only cases which do qualify as prima facie wrongful age discrimination according to intention-focused accounts. Proponents have the further option of
accepting the argument from specialness such that the prima facie reasons against the
treatment in question can be outweighed by other reasons due to age’s specialness.
For example, while the employer’s decision not to call Alex back because of ageist
prejudice is prima facie wrong, affirmative egalitarian considerations may provide an
outweighing reason in favour of the decision, all things considered. However, proponents of intention-focused accounts will presumably object that bad intentions
cannot be counterbalanced by good outcomes. They then deny premise (3), thus
restricting specialness considerations to the prima facie level.
Intention-focused accounts thus manage to capture our intuitions in some cases of
intentional age-based treatment but fail in others. Moreover, they cannot differentiate between non-intentional cases but rather give them all a moral free pass. Finally,
while they can account for specialness considerations when these constitute exculpating mental content on the part of the agent, they will presumably deny them the
weightier status of outweighing moral reasons.
4.2 Social meaning accounts
While the previous accounts focus on the intentions behind the act, the present ones
focus on its meaning for others. Here, an instance of discrimination is prima facie
wrong when and because it is objectively demeaning, in the sense of expressing ‘a lack
of respect for the equal humanity of the other’, from a position of power that gives
force to the expression (Hellman 2008: 36).13 To assess whether these conditions are
met, we need to interpret the act within its social context by examining conventional
methods of expressing respect and disrespect, the agent’s social status, etc. Such an
assessment will take certain mental states of people—which may include the agent
but also the victim, the general public, possibly a hypothetical impartial observer—
into account: beliefs and attitudes concerning, for example, socially salient groups,
power relations, and social norms.1⁴ But, in contrast to the previous accounts, the
mental states of the agent are not the only decisive criteria here.
Social meaning accounts have the potential to assess all four forms of age discrimination. For example, regardless of whether the employer’s decision to disregard Alex’s
13 See Shin (2009); Bidadanure (2016).
1⁴ According to Hellman (2008: 75), demeaningness is modestly objective: neither entirely independent
of people’s beliefs and practices (strongly objective) nor totally dependent on what the majority thinks
(minimally objective).
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 23
application is motivated by blatant ageist prejudice (Table 1.1: boxes (I) or (II)) or due
to unnoticeable implicit bias (box III), it is prima facie wrong if it expresses disrespect.
Or, if the employer uses the facially neutral criterion ‘overqualified’, being genuinely
unaware of how this affects older applicants (box IV), their action may still express
disrespect if it signals that older people’s interests may safely be neglected. Note that
even seemingly benign actions may be rendered objectionable if they become tainted
by disrespect. For example, if a volunteer helps the elderly with an air of superiority
or a patronizing demeanour, this may then render their treatment demeaning, via
the uptake of others, and, hence, prima facie wrong. In the abovementioned cases,
social meaning accounts deliver intuitively plausible verdicts.
On the other hand, some intuitively objectionable age-based treatment might
be exculpated. Consider an employer who immediately dismisses an older, clearly
qualified applicant as unqualified. In a social context where everyone is aware of
the ubiquity of implicit age bias, the action may then be exculpated as a merely
unfortunate consequence of the employer’s all-too-human psychology rather than
an expression of disrespect. This seems more problematic.
The idea that the moral status of age-based treatment hinges on its social meaning
within a given context has further troubling implications. Imagine a social context
with commonly shared ageist beliefs, where age-based treatment is routinely seen as
a ‘natural’ consequence of age-based properties. No such treatment may then even
register as prima facie wrong since it never expresses disrespect. In the extreme, in
a fully age-segregated society, there may be no instance of wrongful age discrimination at all. This seems intuitively questionable, to put it mildly (consider equivalent
examples involving gender or age).
Now, consider only cases which do qualify as prima facie wrongful age discrimination according to social meaning accounts. Proponents may, again, accept or reject
that prima facie reasons against age discrimination can be outweighed by specialness considerations, as proposed in premise (3) of the argument from specialness.
Here, it seems rather plausible that they should accept the argument. Specifically,
premise (3) captures the dynamics involved in changes to the social meaning—and
thus arguably the moral status—of age-based treatment. Consider the employer’s
decision not to call back Charlie, who is under 18 but clearly qualified. In a social
context, where this expresses a lack of respect for youngsters, this is then prima
facie wrongful age discrimination. Now, assume that public debate arises around the
social benefits of a minimum employment age of 18. Advocates point out that this
would ensure that youngsters finish their basic education prior to entering the labour
market, thus referring to collective sequence efficiency considerations. This means
that specialness considerations are employed as outweighing reasons in favour of an
age limit, along the lines of premise (3). If this debate eventually yields widespread
agreement on this age limit, the prima facie status of the type of act changes: the
employer’s next decision not to call back a qualified under-18-year-old applicant just
because of their age will adhere to changed social norms and thus no longer express
disrespect.
This reasoning along the lines of the argument from specialness brings out that
social
accountsEbook
have the advantage
of being
responsive to changing social
Downloadmeaning
Complete
By email
at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
ByIsemail
at etutorsource@gmail.com
24 AgeComplete
Discrimination:Ebook
Is It Special?
It Wrong?
contexts, thus keeping their verdicts closer to common intuitions (within these contexts). The flipside is that these accounts risk losing the critical distance to the social
context they are supposed to evaluate—as seen in their counterintuitive assessments
within the above extremely age-segregated society.
4.3 Harm accounts
Both previous accounts of the wrongness of discrimination pick up on one sense of
‘being treated worse’: (b) being treated as inferior. The present account picks up on
the other: (a) being made worse off. Here, an instance of discrimination is prima
facie wrong when and because it harms the victim, that is, makes them fare worse
as compared to what they would have had they not had socially salient property P
(Lippert-Rasmussen 2014; Berndt Rasmussen 2019). Thus, harm accounts compare
the actual and counterfactual outcome, relative property P, in terms of the subject’s
welfare levels.
Harm accounts also have the potential to assess all four forms of discrimination.
Consider Alex, who is 60+ and not called back. Harm accounts are insensitive to
whether the decision is motivated by open ageism (Table 1.1: box I) or implicit bias
(box III), whether a facially neutral criterion is used in a premediated way (box II) or
due to lack of better understanding (box IV). What counts is only the resulting harm
to Alex, that she (in the relevant sense) fares worse. But does she, really?
As the evidence from middle-aged Billie indicates, had Alex been middle-aged,
she would have been called back. Has she thus been made worse off compared to a
counterfactual state in which she had been middle-aged, rather than 60+? This may
seem obvious at first. Yet, in the light of the above complete life neutrality account,
there is room for doubt.
Arguably, had Alex been middle-aged at this point in time (like Billie), she would
have been 60+ at some later point—and, ceteris paribus, not been called for an interview then instead. Maybe we could say that Alex is made worse off compared to
had she been middle-aged (like Billie) at any time of her life. Yet, this is nomologically impossible and hence cannot be a relevant counterfactual here. There is
still another sense in which we could claim that Alex is made worse off, viz., compared to the counterfactual state in which no age criteria are used at all. Assessing
this claim is a difficult empirical matter. Specialness considerations pertaining to
individual sequence efficiency give us reason to doubt that such a claim would
eventually bear out. Thus, under strict ceteris paribus conditions with individually
(complete life) beneficial age criteria, the employer’s decision not to call Alex back
due to her age does not make Alex worse off and is thus not prima facie morally
wrong.
In many cases, however, such demanding ceteris paribus conditions do not hold
(e.g. employment opportunities vary over birth cohorts) or age criteria do not achieve
individual sequence efficiency. Then, the employer’s decision may make Alex worse
off and thus be prima facie morally wrong.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 25
Thus, for harm accounts, some specialness considerations—individual sequence
efficiency, complete life neutrality—are relevant on the prima facie level. Others are
not: for example, the affirmative egalitarian claim that mandatory retirement rules
reduce inequalities between people will not matter for the assessment of whether
Alex is harmed. The same goes for collective sequence considerations (that focus on
collective benefits) or means–end considerations (that focus on the employer’s benefit
of using age as a proxy). Thus, while all specialness considerations can be relevant
at the prima facie level for intention-focused accounts (if they figure in the agent’s
mental content) and for social meaning accounts (if they shape the meaning of the
act), harm accounts are more selective at this level.
However, even here, all specialness considerations may re-enter the picture in
the role specified by premise (3) of the specialness argument, generating outweighing reasons for age-based treatment that is prima facie wrong. For example, the
employer’s decision not to call Alex back may be harmful to Alex and, hence, prima
facie wrong but nevertheless overall justified due to the promotion of utility (through
collective sequence efficiency) or equality (through affirmative egalitarian effects).
One final note: the central focus of harm accounts is the victim and the discriminating act’s effects on how they fare in life, which is intuitively appealing. Some might
worry that harm accounts nevertheless miss other important factors, as covered by
the two rival accounts, respectively. Still, depending on how the concept of harm is
spelled out, (part of) the victim’s harm may result from, for example, their perception of the action as socially demeaning or of the agent’s intentions. The harm account
may thus be able to integrate some of these factors as well.
5. Conclusion
In this chapter, I have brought together considerations of the specialness of age with
three influential accounts of the moral wrongness of discrimination. I have evaluated these accounts’ moral verdicts for age-based treatments and explored how they
can take specialness considerations into account. In doing so, I have proposed a template for recognizing, understanding, and morally evaluating different forms of age
discrimination.
As a final concession, the chapter does not give determinate answers to its two title
questions. My hope is that this proposed template may be useful for others interested
in further pursuing these questions.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download
ByIsemail
at etutorsource@gmail.com
26 AgeComplete
Discrimination:Ebook
Is It Special?
It Wrong?
support, constructive comments, and never-ending patience. Financial support by
the Swedish Research Council, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and the Marianne and
Marcus Wallenberg Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.
References
Alexander, Larry. 1992. ‘What Makes Wrongful Discrimination: Wrong Biases, Preferences, Stereotypes, and Proxies’. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 141 (1),
pp. 149–219.
Altman, Andrew. 2016. ‘Discrimination’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Winter edn), ed. Edward N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/discrimination.
Arneson, Richard. 2006. ‘What Is Wrongful Discrimination?’ San Diego Law Review
43 (4), pp. 777–806.
Berndt Rasmussen, Katharina. 2019. ‘Harm and Discrimination’. Ethical Theory and
Moral Practice 22 (4), pp. 873-891.
Berndt Rasmussen, Katharina. 2020. ‘Implicit Bias and Discrimination’. Theoria 86 (6),
pp. 727–748.
Bickenbach, Jerome. 2016. ‘Disability and Health Care Rationing’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring edn), ed. Edward N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab,
Stanford University. https://stanford.edu/entries/disability-care-rationing.
Bidadanure, Juliana. 2016. ‘Making Sense of Age-Group Justice: A Time for Relational
Equality?’ Politics, Philosophy & Economics 15 (3), pp. 234–260.
Bognar, Greg. 2008. ‘Age-Weighting’. Economics & Philosophy 24 (2), pp. 167–189.
Bognar, Greg. 2015. ‘Fair Innings’. Bioethics 29 (4), pp. 251–261.
Cortina, Lilia M., Dana Kabat-Farr, Emily A. Leskinen, Marisela Huerta, and Vicki
J. Magley. 2013. ‘Selective Incivility as Modern Discrimination in Organizations:
Evidence and Impact’. Journal of Management 39 (6), pp. 1579–1605.
Cupit, Geoffrey. 2013. ‘Age Discrimination’. In International Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed.
Hugh LaFollette. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee284
Daniels, Norman. 1988. Am I My Parents’ Keeper?: An Essay on Justice between the Young
and the Old. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Derous, Eva, and Jeroen Decoster. 2017. ‘Implicit Age Cues in Resumes: Subtle Effects on
Hiring Discrimination’. Frontiers in Psychology 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.
01321
Gosseries, Axel. 2014. ‘What Makes Age Discrimination Special? A Philosophical Look
at the ECJ Case Law’. Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 43 (1), pp. 59–80.
Hellman, Deborah. 2008. When is Discrimination Wrong? Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. 2014. Born Free and Equal?: A Philosophical Inquiry into the
Nature of Discrimination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
Ageing without Ageism? 27
Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. 2017. ‘The Philosophy of Discrimination: An Introduction’. In The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Discrimination, ed. Kasper LippertRasmussen. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 1–16.
Macnicol, John. 2006. Age Discrimination: An Historical and Contemporary Analysis.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malinen, Sanna, and Lucy Johnston. 2013. ‘Workplace Ageism: Discovering Hidden Bias’.
Experimental Aging Research 39 (4), pp. 445–465.
McKerlie, Dennis. 1992. ‘Equality between Age-Groups’. Philosophy & Public Affairs
21 (3), pp. 275–295.
Moreau, Sophia. 2017. ‘Discrimination and Freedom’. In The Routledge Handbook of
the Ethics of Discrimination, ed. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 164–173.
Nussbaum, Martha C., and Saul Levmore. 2017. Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations about
Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, and Regret. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Overall, Christine. 2006. ‘Old Age and Ageism, Impairment and Ableism: Exploring the
Conceptual and Material Connections’. National Women’s Studies Association Journal
18 (1), pp. 126–137.
Schauer, Frederick. 2017. ‘Statistical (And Non-Statistical) Discrimination’. The Routledge
Handbook of the Ethics of Discrimination, ed. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen. London/New
York: Routledge, pp. 42–53.
Shin, Patrick S. 2009. ‘The Substantive Principle of Equal Treatment’. Legal Theory 15 (2),
pp. 149–172.
Wedeking, Gary A. 1990. ‘Is Mandatory Retirement Unfair Age Discrimination?’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (3), pp. 321–334.
Download Complete Ebook By email at etutorsource@gmail.com
We Don’t reply in this website, you need to contact by email for all chapters
Instant download. Just send email and get all chapters download.
Get all Chapters For E-books Instant Download by email at
etutorsource@gmail.com
You can also order by WhatsApp
https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=%2B447507735190&text&type=ph
one_number&app_absent=0
Send email or WhatsApp with complete Book title, Edition Number and
Author Name.
Download