Age Limits and the Significance of Entire Lives Egalitarianism

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines 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. The chapter provides an overview of the entire-life view and explores its possible underlying intuitions. It 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, in fact, desirable). It 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 necessarily offer us insights that are as significant as expected to defend age limits over their whole range.