Intergenerational Justice Prize 2016/17

'The Broken Generational Contract in Europe: Generous Transfers to the Elderly Population, Low Investments in Children' by Bernhard Hammer, Tanja Istenic and Lili Vargha won third place of the 2016/17 Demography Prize of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations!

The paper illustrates and quantifies intergenerational transfer flows in 16 EU countries using National Transfer Accounts data. In particular, it measures the agespecific value of transfers within households, including services produced by unpaid household work. These transfers play a central role in a society, but are hardly visible in official statistics. We elaborate the concept of a generational contract to show the interrelation between transfers to children and the transfers to the elderly population. Based on the transfer data, we develop and calculate a new measure of intergenerational balance of transfers. The results indicate that the patterns of intergenerational transfers are at odds with the generational contract. In most of the analyzed countries the transfers and investments in children are by far too low to finance the generous transfers to the elderly population in the future.

It will be published in IGJR Vol. 12 (1/2018).
www.igjr.org

https://generationengerechtigkeit.info/demografie-preis/generationengerechtigkeit-messen-201617/

‹ show all articles