Ageing and Equality Under the Law

The ageing of a population creates pressure for social reform. As persons aged above 60 make up an increasing proportion of the population, new challenges and opportunities arise for example in the workplace and in the sphere of care, to name just two contexts for social reform. This article examines how the law should regulate social reform in an ageing society. More specifically, it examines how the legal prohibition on age-discrimination present in a number of jurisdictions should be interpreted from a normative point of view. The main claim of the article is that we should endorse a narrow construal the legal prohibition of age-discrimination. According to this construal the prohibition of age-discrimination prohibits only policies and practices that show disrespect for persons due to their age. A wider construal that prohibits also policies and practices that have a differential impact on the interests of persons because of their age is unjustified. After elaborating the case against the wide construal of age-discrimination, the article explains the narrow construal in more detail by elaborating on the relevant sense in which policies and practices may not show «disrespect» for persons due to their age. It then illustrates the practical relevance of the narrow construal of the prohibition against age-discrimination in the context of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice