Intergenerational Justice

The IGP and Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP UK) have established a unique partnership to accelerate the emergence of intergenerational justice as a core concern of the global policymaking community.

We live in a world beset by long-term, systemic crises that our political systems seem poorly equipped to cope with. Our understanding of poverty as an intergenerational issue is growing. Recent developments in cognitive science and epigenetics have enhanced our knowledge of how the impact of poverty spans generations. These developments challenge current paradigms of the nature of poverty, making it clear that a long-term approach is necessary.

Yet electoral cycles of four or five years do not lend themselves to serious discussion of intergenerational tradeoffs in areas such as pensions policy or climate change. Moreover, as illustrated earlier this year by the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, our political culture seems chronically unable to seriously debate issues of intergenerational significance.

The IGP and ASAP UK will run a programme of events to bring together experts from across these fields and produce a more rigorous understanding of what intergenerational justice entails, and how public policy needs to change now in order to create better outcomes in the future.