Fair Innings
- 9 June 2014
- Vol. 29 (4), 251-261
- https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12101
Abstract
In many societies, the aging of the population is becoming a major problem. This raises difficult issues for ethics and public policy. On what is known as the fair innings view, it is not impermissible to give lower priority to policies that primarily benefit the elderly. Philosophers have tried to justify this view on various grounds. In this article, I look at a consequentialist, a fairness-based, and a contractarian justification. I argue that all of them have implausible implications and fail to correspond to our moral intuitions. I end by outlining a different kind of consequentialist justification that avoids those implications and corresponds better to our considered moral judgments.Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- Justice between Adjacent Generations: Further Thoughts*Journal of Political Philosophy, 2008
- AGE-WEIGHTINGEconomics and Philosophy, 2008
- The significance of age and duration of effect in social evaluation of health careHealth Care Analysis, 1996