JRC science for intergenerational fairness

Overview

Intergenerational fairness asks whether today's policies are leaving our children and grandchildren with more opportunities or fewer.

Decisions on climate, public finances, education, health and digital transformation shape the life chances of children and young people long before they have a voice in those choices. Balancing benefits and burdens across age groups is therefore not only a matter of solidarity, but of long-term resilience, social justice and sustainability.

The EU strategy on intergenerational fairness seeks to address this challenge by embedding a long-term, cross-cutting perspective into policymaking.

What the JRC is doing

From the earliest stages of the policy cycle, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) has supported Commissioner Glenn Micallef and the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture with scientific evidence, foresight analysis and innovative methods.

This contribution strengthens the analytical foundations of the strategy and promotes more future-oriented and fair EU decision making.

The materials presented on this page are the result of a co-creation process facilitated by the JRC. Offered as contributions to the wider policy conversation beyond the scope of the strategy, these insights and tools are intended to inspire and support policymakers in applying an intergenerational lens when developing policies.

Insights from the co-creation process

Designing policies with long-term effects requires balancing immediate priorities with future impacts. Five insights support anyone who wants to design policies that are fair to future generations:

Start early and think ahead
Integrating systemic, future‑oriented reflection at the very beginning of the policy cycle helps anticipate long‑term impacts on different generations and supports simpler, more coherent policy packages.
Use science and foresight together
Combining robust evidence with foresight, design and behavioural insights makes it easier to see how today’s choices might play out over decades, and to test options before they are locked in.
Work with inspiration, connection and care
The co-creation process showed that fair futures are built around three core values: inspiration (supporting long‑term thinking), connection (collaboration between generations) and care (attention to intersecting vulnerabilities).
Use an intergenerational fairness lens
Intergenerational fairness can be seen as a lens in support of creating more regenerative policies. Policies that support equitable prosperity, inclusive communities, ecological integrity, societal resilience and value-based innovation.
Co‑create and stress‑test
A four‑step journey, designed by the JRC, consists of scoping, visioning, ideation and co‑creation. This enabled citizens, experts and institutions to shape options together and stress‑test them across different futures before the strategy was adopted.

Tools, methodologies and publications

Designing policies through an intergenerational lens requires practical tools and knowledge backed up by scientific evidence. The JRC offers a range of tools, methodologies and publications that can support policymakers in designing policies that safeguard the interest and opportunities of current and future generations.

The tools, methods and publications below are grouped into three categories inspired by the strategy:

1. Fair policymaking – anticipating impacts across generations

Future‑oriented policymaking and futures literacy

Resources to help policymakers apply an intergenerational lens, explore alternative futures, and embed forward‑looking.

Future Forward – an online course offering practical insights into future thinking, anticipation and foresight – empowering future policymakers to shape a more informed and imaginative future.
Future-oriented policymaking – an online course designed to strengthen foresight capabilities and integrate future-oriented thinking into decision-making processes (coming September 2026).

AI-assisted tools

Futures Balance – an AI-assisted tool (currently in prototyping phase), grounded in Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation, to support policy design by making intergenerational fairness and long-term trade-offs explicit and comparable across time and dimensions. The tool was developed by Beyond Lab at UN Geneva in collaboration with the JRC (coming October 2026).
Watch the short video to see how Futures Balance works.
Read the policy brief to learn more about Futures Balance.

Long‑term governance and experimentation

Methods and examples that can inspire long‑term thinking and trust‑based policymaking.

Futures Garden – an environment for policy experimentation through speculative design
Trust-based policymaking – a policy brief on the role of trust-based policymaking for better anticipatory governance.
Trauma-informed policymaking – a policy brief on an experiment connecting past, present and future for more resilient policies (coming in March 2026).

2. Fair opportunities – whole of lifecycle approach

Demography and the emerging gaps

Analyses on how demographic change affects informal care, income, housing and public budgets, and how responsibilities are distributed across generations.

Informal long-term care in the context of demographic change and intergenerational fairness in the EU – a policy brief on the differences in caregiving and care-receiving patterns between generations.
Intergenerational fairness in the EU: income and housing dynamics in the context of demographic change – a report on the income and housing situation across generations.
Will the kids be alright? – an interactive story on the generational effects on economic outcomes in an ageing society.

Breaking the cycle

Insights on how to break intergenerational cycles of disadvantage including through early intervention and support for young people’s mental and physical health.

Addressing poverty in the EU – a report offering insights on poverty reduction and intergenerational fairness.
Decoding Depression: Exploring the ‘Environome’ Across Life Course – a report offering insights to policymakers working on mental health.

Measuring intergenerational fairness

Indexes and frameworks to monitor and evaluate intergenerational fairness actions.

Measuring sustainable and inclusive wellbeing: a multidimensional dashboard approach – a dashboard for sustainable and inclusive wellbeing.
Beyond GDP and life expectancy: welfare comparisons across the Atlantic – a report on augmented GDP methodologies for EU policymaking.
Intergenerational Fairness Monitoring Tool – a toolkit to measure trends in youth and senior well-being alongside environmental health over two decades or more (coming April 2026).

3. Fair places – connecting locally

Intergenerational dialogue and collective visioning

Tested tools for intergenerational dialogues and collective visioning that local, national and EU actors may use when implementing the strategy.

Citizen Engagement through Citizen Panels – a report capturing key lessons from the citizen panel on intergenerational fairness.
Collective visioning in practice: Our futures and policies – a report collecting and analysing citizen input for policymakers (coming March 2026).
Intergenerational Dialogue kit – a set of methodologies to help policymakers run intergenerational dialogues (coming April 2026).

Fair and resilient spaces and systems

Methods and guidance to design intergenerational, sustainable, and inclusive spaces and systems.

New European Bauhaus Compass – a framework for decision-makers who want to build sustainable and inclusive living spaces through community participation and co-creation.
Integrated bioeconomy land use assessment: Land system responses to bioeconomy-related policies – a quantitative storytelling project in the context of the EU bioeconomy to support inclusive discussions around natural resource management.
ACTIONbook on Innovation for Place-Based Transformations – a toolkit to support a sustainable transformation of cities and regions.

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