Ageing without Ageism? Conceptual Puzzles and Policy Proposals

Ageing without Ageism? contributes to the essential and timely discussion of age, ageism, population ageing, and public policy. It demonstrates the breadth of the challenges posed by these issues by covering a wide range of policy areas: from health care to old-age support, from democratic participation to education, and from family to fiscal policy.

With contributions from 21 authors the discussion bridges the gap between academia and public life by putting in dialogue fresh philosophical analysis and specific new policy proposals. It approaches familiar issues like age discrimination, justice between age groups, and democratic participation across the ages from novel perspectives.

Greg Bognar, Associate Professor of Practical Philosophy, Stockholm University,Axel Gosseries, FNRS Research Professor and Professeur extraordinaire, UCLouvain

Greg Bognar is Associate Professor in Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University and a Senior Researcher at the Stockholm Centre for Healthcare Ethics (CHE). Previously, he worked at LaTrobe University in Melbourne, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Center for Bioethics at New York University, and the Central European University. He held research fellowships at Princeton University, Harvard University, and Flinders University. He is co-author of the book The Ethics of Health Care Rationing: An Introduction (Routledge, 2014; second, expanded edition 2022).


Axel Gosseries is a philosopher (PhD., UCLouvain) and a law scholar (LL.M., London). He is FNRS Research Professor and Professeur extraordinaire at UCLouvain (Belgium) where he heads the Hoover Chair in economic and social ethics and the PPE Program. He has published in philosophy, law and economics journals and has been working for 25 years on issues of intergenerational justice. He has taught courses and seminars in 13 countries and has spent research time in a variety of research institutes, including recently at ICUB (Bucharest), ISCTE-IUL (Lisbon), AIAS (Aarhus), IJ-UC (Coimbra), IFFS (Stockholm), the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague).

1. Introduction, Greg Bognar and Axel Gosseries
2. Age Discrimination: Is It Special? Is It Wrong?, Katharina Berndt Rasmussen
3. Does the Badness of Disability Differ from that of Old Age?, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
4. In Defence of Age-Differentiated Paternalism, Viki Møller Lyngby Pedersen
5. Age and the Social Value of Risk Reduction: Three Perspectives, Matthew D. Adler
6. Can Egalitarians Justify Spending More on the Elderly?, Paul Bou-Habib
7. Age Limits and the Significance of Entire Lives Egalitarianism, Axel Gosseries
8. Age Universalism will Benefit All (Ages), Simon Birnbaum and Kenneth Nelson
9. “Let Them Be Children”? Age Limits in Voting and Conceptions of Childhood, Anca Gheaus
10. Age and the Voting-Driving Analogy, Alexandru Volacu
11. Empowering Future People by Empowering the Young?, Tyler M. John
12. COVID-19, Age, and Rationing, Greg Bognar
13. Ageism in Assisted Reproduction, Francesca Minerva
14. An Education Resource Account for Early School Leavers, Andrée-Anne Cormier and Harry Brighouse
15. Differentiating Retirement Age to Compensate for Health and Longevity Inequality?, Vincent Vandenberghe
16. Aging in Place and Autonomy: Is the 'Age-Friendly' City Initiative Too Elderly-Friendly?, Kim Angell
17. An Age-Based Delayed Housing Wealth Tax, Daniel Halliday
18. Two Types of Age-Sensitive Taxation, Manuel Sá Valente
19. An Age-Differentiated Tax on Bequests, Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere