Abstract

The Welfare State insures citizens against the risk of losing one’s job (unemployment insurance), the risk of disease (health insurance), the risk of old-age poverty (pension insurance) and the risk of fertility (family allowances). However, the Welfare State does not insure citizens against the most dramatic of all risks: the risk of having a short life, that is, the risk of premature death. Worse: existing pension systems organize implicit monetary transfers from short-lived persons to long-lived persons, against any logic of compensation. The universal uncertainty about the length of life and the ideal of social justice look irreconcilable. Is a social insurance against a short life possible? What form should this insurance device take? How could one reform pension systems to make these less unjust for the short-lived? The present essay proposes clear and synthetic answers to these questions. It is first argued that, even though victims of a premature death and damages due to a short life are invisible, victims of a short life are harmed, to an extent that depends on the quantity and the quality of the life-years that would have been lived in the absence of a premature death, elements that depend on how societies allocate benefits and burdens across the ages of life. It is also argued that, although standard ethical approaches such as utilitarianism and Rawlsian liberal-egalitarianism would not justify compensating the short-lived, it is possible to legitimate the compensation of the (future) short-lived persons on the grounds of their most urgent needs to live good things during their – limited – lifetime. Obstacles to the construction of a social insurance against a short life are numerous. Persons who will turn out to die prematurely in the future cannot be identified ex ante, when they are still alive. But once the duration of life is known (ex post), it is generally too late to intervene to compensate the short-lived, since he is dead. However, despite these obstacles, it is possible to construct a social insurance against a short life, by acknowledging that all short-lived persons used to belong to younger age groups. Hence, the quality of their (short) life can be improved by adopting a simple maxim recommending the allocation of the ‘good things of life’ at young ages and the ‘bad things of life’ at older ages. Age-based statistical discrimination favouring the young can reduce welfare losses due to a premature death. A social insurance against a short life requires a reverse retirement system, that is, a system where young adults enjoy a retirement period before starting their career. Under this system, pension allowances paid to young adults would be funded by the labour of senior workers. Reverse retirement would make retirement available to everyone, and would improve the situation of the young, who include the (unidentified) future short-lived. By laying the foundations of a social insurance against a short life, reverse retirement would reconcile the universal uncertainty about the age at death with the requirements of social justice.