Can Egalitarians Justify Spending More on the Elderly?

Modern welfare states devote a disproportionate amount of their budget to the needs of the elderly. This raises a puzzle for egalitarians: people who reach old age are often, on the whole, more fortunate than those who don’t because they have enjoyed a longer life. In devoting disproportionate expenditure towards their needs, the welfare state thus appears to be privileging the needs of those who are more fortunate than others. This chapter examines the response to this puzzle provided by relational egalitarians who justify disproportionate expenditure on the elderly on the grounds that it is necessary to protect them against domination and marginalization, among other forms of mistreatment. But it argues that the relational egalitarian response does not solve the puzzle. The chapter proposes a different solution based on the claims that suffering is intrinsically bad and should be prevented and that disproportionate expenditure on the needs of the elderly is a form of insurance that all people would have purchased under fair circumstances.