Annual Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics

We are delighted to announce details of the latest publication in the Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics, published by Oxford University Press.

How to Pool Risks Across Generations: The Case for Collective Pensions

Professor Michael Otsuka, 2020 Uehiro Lecturer

Published: 27 June 2023, Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198885962

How to Pool Risks across Generations makes the case for the collective provision of pensions, on fair terms of social cooperation. Through the insurance of a mutual association which extends across society and over multiple generations, we share one another's fates by pooling risks across both space and time. Resources are transferred, not simply between different people, but also within the possible future lives of each person: from one's more fortunate to one's less fortunate future selves. The book opens with an investigation of the longevity and investment risk that even a single individual on a desert island would face in providing for her old age. From this atomistic starting point, it builds up, within and across the chapters, to increasingly collective forms of pension provision. By joining together, it is possible to tame the risks we would face as individuals each with our own private pension pot. A collective pension can be justified as a 'social union of social unions': an enduring corporate body, which is formed by agreements to pool risks, in a manner that involves reciprocity between the various individuals that constitute the collective. Even though all individuals age and die, a collective pension scheme remains evergreen, as the average age of members remains relatively unchanged, through the influx of new members to replace those who retire. It is therefore possible to smooth risks indefinitely across as well as within generations, to the mutual advantage of each.

Link to the Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics on the OUP website: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/category/academic/series/philosophy/uspe.do

A conference was held in Larry's honour at Rutgers University on 27 October 2023, guests included several past Uehiro Lecturers, Shelly Kagan (2016), Jeff McMahan (2006), Mike Otsuka (2020), Frances Kamm (2008), Howard McGary (forthcoming 2021), and Peter Singer (2007), as well as Roger Crisp (Director, Oxford Uehiro Centre) and Ingmar Persson (Distinguished Research Fellow).

We wish Professor Larry Temkin (2017 Uehiro Lecturer) a long and happy retirement! For information on Larry's lecture series Obligations to the Needy, titles, abstracts, audio recordings, as well as the resulting book Being Good in a World of Need, please see the 2017 Lectures page.

Videos of some of the Uehiro Centre's Annual Lectures, including Allen Buchanan (2009), Janet Radcliffe Richards (2012), Tim Scanlon (2013), Michael Otsuka (2020) and Peter Railton (2022) are available on our YouTube channel (full playlist below).